Poo Lorn Of The Elephants

the pilot books

POO LORN OP THE ELEPHANTS

Map illustrating the scene of Poo Lorn’s activities

Note.— The map is not to scale, and some of the places and
rivers named are imaginary.

POO LORN
OF THE ELEPHANTS

by

EEGINALD CAMPBELL

EDITED AND ABRIDGED FOR CLASS USE
WITH THE APPRO ^L^HimE. AUTHOR

I r' fa 1 A / ‘

Illustrated by
G. J. Amblee

UNIVERSITy OF LONDON PRESS Ltd.
10 & 11 WARWICK: LANE, LONDON, E.C.4

Price Re. 1-4-0

First Printed

JijLY 1937

BEPKINTED IN INDIA
SI LONGMANS, GREEN & CO. LTD.
BY ARRANGEMENT THE

DNIVEBSITY OP LONDON PRESS, LTD.

COPYRIGHT

stunted in INDIA AT THE DIOCESAN PRESS, MADRAS (P.I.C. NO. Q.H.
MS. 5) FOR MESSRS. LONGMANS, GREEN & CO. LTD. (P.I.C. NO. MS. 3)

20-7-1946-C2380

ABOUT TEPia BOOK

It is always reassuring, particularly when, like Poo Lorn
of the Elephants, a book deals with strange and out-
of-the way matters, to know that the author has a large
first-hand experience of his subject. That is true of
Eeginald Campbell, who probably knows more about
elephants and their habits and minds than anyone else
who has ever written about them.

Leaving Perkhamsted School just before the War,
he served in the Navy until 1919, when he resigned his
commission to put into practice his main ambition,
which was, like Cairns’s in the story, to get to know the
Far East, and particularly the jungle, at close quarters.
As forest Assistant to a British firm leasing Siamese
teak Forests, he began living the story which he has told
in Teak Wallah. For five years, during which the jungle
was almost his only home, a tent his house, and coolies
and timber- working elephants his companions, he
escaped the more dramatic dangers of wild beasts and
snakes, his own elephants, and once being lost without
food for thirty hours; but at last dysentery and malaria
drove him to England for a cure. He returned East
against doctor’s orders, but eventually had to give up
for good in 1924.

He then turned author. Beading this slightly
shoi^tened version of Poo Lorn of the Elephants, one
quickly understands why his stories and novels have
been translated into many languages, and two of them
into Braille for blind readers.

V

CONTENTS

PAET I

'HAPTER PAGE

J. CONCERNING THE EARLIER LIFE OF POO LOPwN 1

II. TEE GIRL AND THE BEAST . . 12

III. A PLOT IS HATCHED . . .18

TV. ELISE COMES TO GPJIAT DANGER . 21

V. THE FIGHT AND ESCAPE OP POO LORN . 26

VI. POO LORN ENTERS HIS WILD KINGDOM 32

VII. POO LORN LOSES HIS HERD . 40

VIII. THE VENGEANCE OF POO LORN 49

PAET TI

)

IX. UNDERSTANDING . 59

X. A JOURNEY AND A PARTING . 64

XI, A GREAT ADVENTURE IS PLANNED . 68

XII. THE MIGHT OP POO LORN . 77

Xin. THE AGONY OP POO LORN . 84

XTV. POO LORN TURNS ROGUE . 91

PAET in

XV. THE TERROR BEGINS . . .97

XVI. A CONFERENCE IS HELD . . .105

XVII. CAIRNS SUSPECTS CHECK LEE . . . 110

XVIII. THE END OF THE TERROR . . 114

vil

Vlll

CONTENTS

CHAFTEB

PAGE

XIX.

THE TRIAL AND REVENGE OP CHECK LFL

123

XX.

THE AGONY OF RICHARD AND ELISE .

130

XXL

LOST IN THE FOREST

. 139

XXTL

JUNGLE NIGHTS AND JUNGLE DAYS

144

PART IV

XXIIL

CHECK LEE PLANS ESCAPE

155

XXIV.

THE STRANGE BEHAVIOUR OF SANG NUU

164

XXV.

THE ARREST OF CHECK LEE

168

XXVL

POO lorn’s LAST WAR-TRAIL

174

XXVIL

DEATH IN THE COMPOUND

. 177

XXVIII.

A REUNION

. 187

XXIX.

ENVOI

191

PAE^a.^

CFAPT^R^

CONCEENING THE EAELIEE LIFE OF POO LOEN

Poo Lorn the Terrible, his work over for the day,
brooded alone in the teak forest. Eound his great
forelegs were iron hobbles which prevented him
from straying too far from the humans he both
served and hated.

This hatred, implanted in his fierce soul since he
had been a tiny “butcha” elephant, had of late
doubled in intensity, for nameless instincts were
urging him to make a long journey to the north.

Poo 'Lorn rapped his trunk against the ground,
swished with ears and tail his formidable neck and
body, and strove fruitlessly to rend apart his
hobbles. The iron links bit into his flesh, and he
rumbled and bubbled with wrath. Why had he
been kept in bondage for all these years, when
other elephants roamed free and wild through the
jungle ranges?

Many seasons had passed, so it seemed to him,
since he had been broken in to harness.

Though he did not remember her now, Poo Lorn’s
first friend had been his gentle mother, who had
worked for the same teak company of which he
himself was now the slave. During his first five
years, when he had run unfettered at her side, she
had been his sole protection from all danger, and
neither by day nor by night had he ever ventured
far from her. By day, when s^e pushed the teak
Jogs down the forest hills into the. swirling rivers

2 POO LORN OF TI3E ELEPHANTS

telow, she would shield him from the heavy baulks
of timber that might crush his little body. Some-
times he even accompanied her when she plunged
into the thrumming jungle streams to clear a jam
of logs. Squealing with fright, and caught by the
eddying currents, he would bounce from one ele-
phant to another, but ever his mother’s trunk found
him and pulled him back to safety.

At night, when the forest was alive with danger,
she was his sure safeguard against the yellow
ghosts with amber eyes that rippled through the
wilderness and stabbed the heart with fear. . . .

There were evenings at this period when the
company elephants were brought into the com-
pound of the great white lord who ruled them.
Little Poo Lorn, lurking beneath his mother, would
watch furtively for the white man to approach. The
white man, on seeing him, would smile and offer
him a handful of the sticky crushed tamarind that
he loved. Prompted by a gentle rumble of approval
from his mother, Poo Lorn would run to the out-
stretched hand. The hand would give the morsel,
then playfully slap him on his tiny curling trunk,
whereupon Poo Lorn would trumpet shrilly and
shuffle quickly back to his protector. This hap-
pened time and again, and always the white man
laughed, as did the dusky Lao mahouts and chain-
men. They little thought that a day would come
when Poo Lorn would stalk the land, a gigantic
nightmare of death : that at the very mention of
his name the inhabitants of every jungle village
in Siam from Ghiengrai to Utaradit would bow
themselves in fear: that Poo Lorn would cut the
main arteries of the life-blood of two nations : that
at sight of him men, women and children would
flee as from a pestilence; but Poo Lorn the Terrible
was little in those days.

Bound his great forelegs were iron hobbles.

4 POO LORN OF THE ELEPHANTS

When he was three years old he began to be
aware that he was as big as, if not bigger than, the
men-animals all round him. He took a delight in-
chasing the coolies and chainmen who tied the
dragging-chains to his mother; and the men would
run, laughing, then pelt him with stones till he
desisted. Once he even tried to chase the great
white lord, but the great white lord was a large
man and armed with a heavy stick. With this
stick he thwacked Poo Lorn on the root of the
trunk, and Poo Lorn left the boss alone in future.

Thus, between grazing and playing, passed the
first five years of Poo Lorn’s life. Then, on one
never-to-be-forgotten day, a large company of
coolies, all carrying ropes, -approached him, and
with them came the white man. His gentle mother
was shackled securely to a stout tree nearby, and
then the trouble -began.

Eopes were cast round Poo Lorn’s legs, and he
was thrown. He struggled desperately to his feet
and charged, knocking two of his aggressors flying;
but this made no difference, for his enemies seemed
countless. His mother, forgetting her training,
plunged frantically to come to his aid, but the
shackles held her fast, so little Poo Lorn was left
to fight on his own.

Bellowing and^ squealing, he rushed round in
circles. Should he charge in one direction, some
men behind him pulled him back. Should he swing
round and make for them, their friends at the op-
posite side of the circle heaved on the ropes. Finally
Poo Lorn, bafBed and screaming, lay down on his
side and kicked with rage.

The men paused for breath, and Noi Lah, the
little Lao headman, spoke :

-“Meh,’- said he, “never have I seen such trouble

THE EARLIEE LIFE OF POO LORN 5

given by a babe. I think one day Poo Lorn become
a mighty big piece elephant.’’

John Morrison, the white manager of the teak
company, nodded assent as he heard the w^ords, but
his eyes were troubled, for the breaking in of
“butchas” was a cruel business. Yet there was no
other way; an elephant had to be taught that man
was its master, and it had to be taught by fear and
fear alone.

Now in this lay tragedy, as John Morrison knew
only too well. For the more an elephant struggled
against its captivity, the less it was likely to sur-
vive. The weak, submitting docilely to bondage,
soon recovered from the strain, but many of the
fierce unconquerable little souls wore themselves
out by constant resistance, ' with the result that
before they were tamed they frequently died from
sheer fatigue. Poo Lorn, to judge from the fight
he was making, had not many days left to live.

“At it again, men,” Morrison had said gruffly,
“and get the business over and done with.”

The struggles were renewed. Poo Lorn was
dragged inch by inch towards a small natural clear-
ing in the forest. This clearing, being close to a
village, was comparatively free from tigers, and in
it four posts had been sunk in the ground. To
these, after hours of terrific toil, they pushed Poo
Lorn into place, and secured him with a leg tied
to each post. After that, having placed fodder and
water within reach of his trunk, they left him.

The day died. Night fell. Poo Lorn was terribly
lonely. Never a morsel of the fodder did he touch;
instead, for hour after hour he swayed and lurched
and strove against his bonds, and for hour after
hour he cried for his mother. She, still tethered
to the tree, heard his wails and bellowed back in
anguish, but they could only plunge and call.

6 POO LORN OF THE ELEPHANTS

In the morning John Morrison hastened to the
clearing. He glanced at the untouched fodder,
then watched the squeaking struggling infant.

“You poor little devil,” he said after a pause.
“But I had to do it. If only you’d eat . . .”

On the second day Morrison was desperate. Poo
Lorn was still feebly struggling, while the fodder
remained untouched. The white man brought,
pounded tamarind, sticks of sugar cane, every dain-
ty dear to the elephantine heart, but Poo Lorn
refused them all. Finally, as a last resort, Morrison
caused a pail to be filled with condensed milk and
water. This he left by Poo Lorn, and then he
returned to 'his bungalow.

“WeTl know by to-morrow whether the little
chap will live,” he told his wife.

The third morning dawned, and when Morrison
arrived in the clearing he found, to his relief, that
Poo Lorn had drunk the milk. There was, how-
ever, an expression in the animal’s eyes that
brought a lump to the white man’s throat. Poo
Lorn had ceas^ struggling and was standing, re-
signed and hopeless, as if all interest in life for him
had ceased. Morrison, who knew the danger of a
broken heart, felt guilty of the murder of a child.

Sharp orders were given to some attendant
coolies, and Poo Lorn was released. He staggered
a few paces, then fell. He lay very still, and more
milk was brought to him. After a while he rose
and stood motionless in the centre of the clearing.
He showed no signs of fight; he made no move
towards the luscious vegetation that grew all round;
he merely drooped, broW in body and spirit.

John Morrison beckoned to his headman. “ Noi"
Lah,” said he, “this elephant shall live.'' And he
gave directions that for the next four weeks, the
best native elephant-doctor in the district should

THE EARLIER LIFE OF POO LORN 7

be in constant attendance on Poo Lorn. During
this period no orders were to be given Poo Lorn;
he was merely to be hobbled and left to graze as
long as he liked. The doctor was to feed him every
morning and evening with arsenic tonic, bark medi-
cine and tamarind. Should he succeed, a great
reward would be his.

The doctor, an old wizened Lao, listened to his
orders, then set to work. He fashioned cunning
balls of medicine from the bark of a hundred dif-
ferent trees, and in ways known only to himself in-
duced his patient to eat the queer dainties. Soon
Poo Lorn began to fatten out, and in a month the
doctor bowed low before John Morrison and claimed
his reward.

A mahout was then summoned to begin Poo
Lorn’s training, and the mahout’s first lesson was
simple. He stood up on tip-toe and pressed the
top of his iron-spiked goad on to Poo Lorn’s back.
The goad pricked, and Poo Lorn knelt to avoid
the pain, whereupon the mahout scrambled on to
the elephant’s neck.

Thus did Poo Lorn enter the servitude of man.

There followed for Poo Lorn ten long years of
howdah work, the howdahs and weights in them
increasing in size as he himself grew in stature. At
first, on forest tours, he carried only the tiniest of
howdahs with the lightest articles of his master’s
camp-kit. With his trunk straight out before him,
he would shuffle along the jungle glades as fast as
his legs could take him, while in his heart was a
^ terrible dread lest he should be left behind, for the
two full-grown baggage elephants were thin and
rangy animals. But somehow he always managed
to keep up with them, and by the time he was

8 POO LOEN OF THE ELEPHANTS

eleven he was able to finish a long journey feeling
as fresh as any of his companions.

He then received the honour of carrying his
master’s heavy, double-covered tent, Poo Lorn
had reason to thank this rising strength oi his, for
on one occasion, when hobbled at night near the
white man’s camp, he was attacked by a tiger.
The tiger sprang at him from behind, and Poo Lorn,
on feeling the tearing rasp of the claws and teeth,
swung round like some gigantic kitten. The tiger,
shaken off by the sudden movement, crouched, and
then, with flattened ears and snarling mouth, sprang
a second time and fastened itself on to the thick
base of Poo Lorn’s trunk.

The pain of the first attack had been nothing to
what it now became. Poo Lorn, hampered though
he was with hobbles round his forefeet, lurched and
swayed in and out between the towering forest
stems, trumpeting and bellowing in his agony, Try
as he might, he could not rid himself of this cling-
ing death, but finally sheer luck saved him. The
hobbles caused him to stumble badly, and he fell
forward on to his head. The great cat, its breath
crushed out of it, momentarily loosed its grip, where-
upon Poo Lorn stabbed it with his tusks, then
pounded and kneaded it with his feet till it was
flattened out of all recognition.

John Morrison, when he inspected him the fol-
lowing morning, looked anxious. Though the
wounds themselves were not particularly deep, the
danger of septic complications was very real, for
the claws of any tiger are steeped in germs bred
from the rotting flesh of its kills. The white man
therefore decreed that the elephant should rest and
remain under the care of the native doctor.

Poo Lorn gradually shook off the poison in his

THE EARLIER LIFE OF POO LORN 9

blood. Then back he went to his howdah work
again.

At the age of fifteen he was considered strong
enough to begin his real work of dragging timber.
His howdah was stowed a’way, and harness planted
on him instead. He joined all the other big ele-
phants of the company’s force, and began to learn
his new duties, which were many and varied.

At first he was clumsy, but he soon learnt tlie
best and easiest way to tackle a log. Moreover, he
almost liked the change in his life, for the terrific
exertion of pulling the dead-weight logs of teak
gave him something on which his ever-increasing
strength could bite.

Sometimes he would be told off to work at the
stumps. This entailed climbing to where the teak

10 POO LORN OF THE ELEPHANTS

trees had been felled and logged by gangs of Kamoo
coolies. He would then push and prod the logs
away from their stumps and down the slopes to
more level ground, where chains would be fastened
to him and he would drag the timber to the nearest
jungle stream.

When the rains broke and these streams became
roaring torrents, he would plunge down the banks,
clear jam after jam of logs, and send the timber
riding down the treacherous yellow currents to
Bangkok, hundreds of miles away to the south. On
these occasions he had no harness on him, only
his mahout, and he liked this work the best of all.
He liked the cool embrace of the water, the sullen
booming of the logs, and the trumpeting and the
crashing and the bellowing that went on all round
him.

When the cold weather came, he would be ridden
a good hundred miles down the great main streams
of Siam, where his job was to straighten out stacks
of logs that had stranded on the gleaming sand-
bars as the rivers fell. On his return from these
trips he would be sent to a rest-camp set in cool
evergreen forest, to graze and recuperate during
the three months of heat that followed the cold
season.

In one of these rest-camps he first made the
acquaintance of the most powerful of all the com-
pany’s elephants, Poo Taw. He delighted in using
his strength on all and sundry. As soon as he met
Poo Lorn, he started bullying him. He would prod
and* thrust at him viciously with his tusks, so that
Poo Lorn again and again had to leave a succulent
clump of bamboo shoots and flee as fast as his hob-
bles would permit him. For several seasons Poo
Taw took occasion to tease Poo Lorn, but the latter

THE EARLIER LIFE OF POO LORN 11

invariably avoided a fight, content tc hide his time.
But he remembered.

When Poo Lorn was nineteen years old, a herd of
wild elephants passed him in the night. They
moved slowly, grazing as they went. Poo Lorn
looked at them curiously and strange instincts rose
up in his mind. Something told him that they
were of his kind, yet different. They did not smell
of man, for they were free, while he was bound.

It was perhaps the sight of them that awoke the
fierceness deep down in his soul. He began to
“swai,” shaking his head so violently that the mah-
out fell off his perch, and another mahout was chosen
to ride him.

Ai Kharn was a swarthy, villainous Kamoo of
inveterate gambling habits, but one of the most
daring of all the company’s riders. Armed with a
spiked iron goad and a wicked little dagger, he could
compel the fiercest elephant to obedience.

Poo Lorn suffered himself to be mastered, but
his dislike of servitude grew and grew, for those
strange nameless instincts to make a long journey
to the north were becoming more and more in-
sistent. Ridden by day and hobbled by night, he
was powerless to obey the call, and soon, with one
notable exception, he began to hate all mankind.
The brown people he hated, since these were the
nien who chained him, but he hated also the great
white lord who ruled the company. It was the
great white lord who first had caused his captivity;
it was he who, when the coolies and chainmen were
fast asleep, uttered loud shouts and aroused both
men and elephants to work again.

Poo Lorn became sullen, morose, formidable.
Even the company elephants began to hold him in^

12 POO LORN OF THE ELEPHANTS

oonsidarable awe. Poo Taw, jealous of his rival’s
size, essayed one more effort, and then at last Poo
Lorn retaliated, fighting with a cold silent ferocity
that would have boded ill for Poo Taw had not a
gang of coolies, armed with spears and flares, ap-
peared on the scene and separated the pair.

Thereafter a silent feud existed between these
two, and it needed only some slight cause to start
a battle that could end only in the death of one
or both of the combatants. The coolies who had
seen the fight, mindful of his fierce mien and
magnificent gait, named him the Terrible.

Of this Poo Lorn was naturally unaware, though
of his bodily strength he was now fully conscious.
He had reached his twenty-sixth year, and thus was
in the first bloom of that gigantic strength that
was to make him famous, not only throughout the
length and breadth of Siam, Burma and Malaya,
but also in the lands of the Leu, Karen, Kamoo
and a dozen other jungle-dwelling tribes.

Poo Lorn the Terrible swayed his vast bulk and
brooded on the wrongs done to him by mankind.
Past bound by iron, he resembled a gigantic engine
of destruction, possessed of the strength of a hun-
dred Samsons and the soul of a tiger.

CHAPTER II

THE GIEL AND THE BEAST

As evening mellowed softly over the earth, Poo
Lorn grunted, for his ears had caught the sound
of bare footsteps approaching. A moment later

THE GIEL AND THE BEAST 13

’Ai Kham came into view, and Poo Lorn suffered
the hobbles to be taken off his legs and swung
•across his broad back. Ai Kharn then climbed on
to the massive nack and by means of deft touches
behind the ears guided the elephant down to the
river.

When Poo Lorn’s bath was over, instead of being
taken back to the forest, he was directed towards
the little native village of Ban Tern for the monthly
inspection of the gTeat white lord.

Through the dusty crowded market-place of the
village, surly pariah dogs, with flea-bitten heads
•and cringing flanks, slunk away at his approach.
<jaily apparelled Lao girls, laden with fruit, salt
and tobacco, ran timidly into their huts, while even
the men-folk shrank to one side, for was not Poo
Lorn the Terrible walking in their midst?

Outside his teak house Check Lee was seated,
drinking in the cool air of the evening, like a mon-
strous spider resting after weaving many webs.
Beside the Chinaman sat Sang Noo, Check Lee’s
.cringing Shan secretary.

As Poo Lorn’s great bulk loomed past them, they
cast covetous glances at the elephant, but Poo Lorn
ignored them and went straight on to the compound
•at the end of the village.

Poo Lorn took his place at the head of the line.
At the opposite end Poo Taw bubbled and rumbled
with wrath.

Prom a large bungalow built on the right of the
compound there emerged John Morrison, accom-
panied by his wife and their eighteen-year-old
daughter Elise,

Elise loved the great compound and the dark,
■gloomy forest that encircled it. She loved also the
brown men and the brown women and the elephants
•and the ponies that peopled her little world.

14 POO LORN OF THE ELEPHANTS

They wera simple souls, these three. Living, as
they had done, for years in the depths of the forest,
many of the blessings of civilisation had been denied
them. They merely did their respective tasks as
well as they could, and loved one another.

As they halted Ijefore Poo Lorn, a striking thing
happened : Elise ran up and gave him a thick,
sticky ball of the pounded tamarind he loved. As
the elephant slowly chewed the ball, the girl stroked
his heavy trunk, and soon a deep rumble of satis-
faction came from the depths of his gigantic body,*
for he was now with his only friend.

The friendship between these two had begun in
curious fashion. When Poo Lorn was eleven he
had come into ‘the compound for the usual monthly
inspection, and Elise, then a tiny tot of four, had
broken away from her mother and run right in
under his tusks. The onlookers, fearful of enrag-
ing him, had signalled to his mahout to remain
absolutely motionless, and Poo Lorn, undisturbed
by the goad, had made no effort to savage the
child. Instead, he had gazed down curiously at
this strange little creature below him. She had
laughed, and with chubby hands that knew no fear
endeavoured to seize the tip of his wriggling trunk.

The baby hands had tickled, and at their touch
Poo Lorn had been conscious of some strange emo-
tion arising within him. With the exception of
the elephant-doctor, here was the first human being
he had met who was neither afraid of him nor
wished to do him hurt. He had felt her all over
with his trunk, which made the child laugh. She
had finally run back to her mother, who, weeping,
caught her to her bosom. '

Poo Lorn’s mahout had then swung him off to
the forest; but little Elise did not forget him. She

THE GIRL AND THE BEAST 15

always waved to him when she saw him, and finally,
when she was an active girl of twelve, she did a
very daring thing, for Poo Lorn was by then in his
' twentieth year and already gaining an unenviable
reputation for fierceness.

On learning that the elephant was hobbled in the
forest close by the compound, she stole out of the
gates one evening and went boldly up to him. She
gave him some tamarind, spoke soothing words in
Lao, and rubbed his trunk. He made no attempt to
molest her; indeed, he seemed to relish her atten-
tion, but when Elise, flushed and triumphant, re-
turned to her father’s bungalow with news of the
exploit, the story was received somewhat coldly by
her parents. After she had been sent early to bed,
however, John Morrison relented.

*‘We must let the child go to Poo Lorn if she
likes,” he told his wife. “If we forbid her making
friends with Poo Lorn, she’ll take the next oppor-
tunity of seeing him alone.”

“Yes, and Poo Lorn will take the very next op-
portunity he can of killing her.”

”He won’t. I know elephants, and if ever there
was a gentleman among ’em that gentleman’s Poo
Lorn. I’ll swear she’s safe with that elephant.
I’ll tell you what we’ll do. We’ll allow Elise to
feed Poo Lorn only when his mahout is with him
and Pm standing by with a loaded rifle. That
ought to give her a pretty good thrill, and at the
same time stop her from doing anything foolish,
such as running off into the jungle and seeing Poo
Lorn on her own.”

Thus a friendship had begun between child and
elephant that had grown firmer down the years.

But now, as Elise fed Poo Lorn while her parents
kept at a respectful distance, Morrison carried no
heavy rifle, for any possible need of that had van-

16 POO LORN OP THE ELEPHANTS

ished long ago, Morrison, as he gazed at the animal
towering up high above his daughter, was conscious
of a strange feeling of compassion for the huge
beast he had tamed.

“I can’t get into the mind of that elephant,” he
said presently.

“What can’t you understand about him,
Daddy?”

“I’ve never ill-treated him since he was broken
in. Yet he seems to hate the lot of us bar you.’'

“Perhaps he wants his freedom again,” ventured
Mary Morrison.

Elise sighed. She perhaps more than anyone
else had seen into the mind of Poo Lorn. ' He was
just aching to be free, and her heart went out to
him in his captivity.

“Daddy, Mother’s right,” she exclaimed sud-
denly, “Poo Lorn does want to be free. Why
don’t you let him go?”

“What — and lose the best timber-working ele-
phant the company possesses? No, I’m not a fool.

atm . . .”

Morrison bit his lip, for he had heard certain
tales from the natives concerning Poo Lorn. Though
his mother had been the very gentlest of females,
rumour had it that Poo Lorn’s sire was a wild
elephant.

“Ai Kharn,” he said, “from now on take double
care that Poo Lorn’s hobbles are well secured.”

The mahout salaamed, and the leviathan was
ridden off back to the forest.

Though not yet in his prime, Poo Lorn stood ten
feet two inches high at the shoulder, and weighed
well over nine thousand pounds. The great curved
tusks were perfect in their symmetry. His massive
head and shoulders were terrific in their power,
while his legs were thick and stocky, as a good

THE GIRL AND THE BEAST 17

elephant’s legs should be. As Ai Kharn swung him
round for inspection, John Morrison flung up his
arms in admiration.

“If Poo Lorn isn’t just the grandest thing alive !”
he breathed.

“He is, but don’t forget the other elephants,”
said Elise practically.

One animal after another was vetted, and finally
John Morrison halted opposite Poo Taw.

Poo Taw’s little pig-eyes were gleaming redly,
and a thin trickle of oil exuded from an orifice in
the forehead between the eye and the ear. This
told the white man that Poo Taw was approaching
“musth,” a state in which all tuskers become
highly dangerous. He therefore gave orders to the
mahout that, for the time, Poo Taw was to be
firmly shackled to a tree in the forest instead of
being merely hobbled.

As the light was failing, John Morrison walked
back to his bungalow. He had reached the foot of
the steps leading up to the building, when a soft
footfall sounded behind him, and he turned to see
Sang Noo, the Chinaman’s secretary, bowing low
before him.

“And what does Sang Noo want at this hour?’-

Sang Noo writhed and cleared his skinny throat.

“Lord,” he croaked in Siamese, “my master,
Check Lee, would fain see you on business of great
importance.”

Presently the Chinaman appeared. He walked'
slowly over the grass and bowed curtly to the white
man.

“In the matter of Poo Lorn,” said he.

“Eh?” exclaimed Morrison, surprised.

“In the matter of Poo Lorn. I give five thou-
sand ticals for him, Mr. Morrison.”

“Poo Lorn is not for .sale.”

18 POO LORN OF THE ELEPHANTS

“I give fifteen thousand ticals for him.”

Now this sum, approximately one thousand five
hundred pounds in sterling, was an nnheard-of
price for an elephant. But John Morrison did not
betray astonishment.

“I repeat, Poo Lorn is not for sale,” he answered
'Coldly.

“Then is the great company losing much money
iby the refusal of its manager to sell the elephant.”

Morrison’s eyes widened.

“That,” he replied, after a pause, “is my affair.
'Check Lee, hadst thou offered me the sum of fifteen
thousand ticals for a dog, I would not have sold it
lihee. Because — I love dogs.”

CI3APTBR III

A PLOT IS HATCHED

Back in his teak house at the end of the village,
Check Lee ordered Ah Pong, his silent Chinese
cook, to bring him tea. He sipped the tea from a
tiny cup, and soon his slanting almond eyes be-
came mere slits. Check Lee was thinking.

The Chinaman’s ethics were simple. He had
money, and money was power. With money one
could rob, murder, eat, drink, enjoy all the
pleasant things of life. And money he had without
doubt, for countless little paddy farms round the
outlying jungle villages were mortgaged to him.
That little naked brown children died of starvation
through his octopus-like grip mattered not to him;
he was a man of business. His business was in-
creasing, for he had recently begun dishonest
dealing in teak and elephants. With the aid of a
villainous gang of elephant thieves, he had estab-

APLOTISHATCHED 19 '

lished a base over the distant French Indo-China
border, where he would be safe from any possible
interference by Siamese gendarmes. Under his
directions the thieves stole various native chiefs’
elephants, altered their brands, then rode them in
secret to this base, where they were disposed of at
good profit to Check Lee.

His heart yearned after Poo Lorn, partly from
jealousy, and partly because that great animal
would be invaluable in rounding up herds of wild
elephants. Yet the Lord Morrison had refused as
much as fifteen thousand ticals for Poo Lorn, and
insulted him, Check Lee, into the bargain.

The Chinaman’s eyes glinted like the eyes of a
snake. Could not some revenge be found?

Finally Check Lee had an inspiration. He
beckoned to his secretary. “Thou knowest Ai
liharn, the mahout of Poo Lorn?”

Sang Noo did, it appeared — ^well.

“Bring him secretly to me this verj^ night,”
Check Lee ordered.

Half an hour later the mahout bowed low before
the Chinaman.

“Ai Kharn,”- said Check Lee, “what pay dost
thou receive from the Lord Morrison?”

“Great One, I reclive but fifteen ticals a
month.”

“But fifteen? Then I have news for thee. I
have big elephants over the Indo-China border^
and I want a good mahout. Ai Kharn, if thou
wilt join my service, a salary of twenty-five ticals
a month shall be thine.”

The mahout gaped, for the salary was a fortune.

“But, for this large sum, a certain little service
is necessary before Ai Kharn shall join ray
elephants.”

“Huh,” croaked the mahout.

20 POO LORN OF TEE ELEPHANTS

“The service is the cutting of Poo Lorn’s tusks.”

The plan for the cutting of the tusks was simple.
The following afternoon, after Poo Lorn had been
bathed, the elephant was to be hobbled in the
jungle some distance away from the remaining
animals of the company. He, Check Lee, would
then send two of his own men with a saw and some
spades. They should reach the elephant at dusk,
^nd with the saw Ai Kharn was to cut the tusks.
The act done, the tusks should be buried under a
convenient tree with as much dispatch as possible.
Then Ai Kharn ’s new contract would be drawn up
and signed. Two guides would then escort him to
safety and the Indo-China border, where he would
start upon his new duties. Did Ai Kharn fully
understand?

Ai Kharn did, but he was no fool.

“Great One, there will be much danger in this
■enterprise. I desire extra payment. In addition
to the twenty-five ticals a month that you have
promised me, I wish for a bonus of one hundred
ticals, 0 Great One.”

Check Lee did not hesitate.

“Here is fifty ticals,” said he, “and the remain-
ing half shall be thine to-morrow night.”

Ai Kharn snatched at the money and went out
into the night.

When he had gone Check Lee breathed a sigh
of satisfaction. Should his plan bear fruit, he
would be well revenged on the white man, for Poo
Lorn shorn of his huge tusks would be of no more
use for timber-work than any timid female ele-
phant. The tusks would never grow again, while
'he, Check Lee, would, after a convenient lapse of
■time, dispose of them at good profit to himself; and
■as for Ai Kharn — it would be easy to arrange a
fatal accident for him once he had served his turn.

CHAPTER lY

ELISB COMES TO GEEAT DANGEE

Elise lay in a long rattan chair set in the coolest
part of the bungalow.

The time was half-past two in the afternoon,
and the thermometer stood at one hundred and
five degrees in the shade.

Presently Elise rose from her chair and leant
over the veranda railings. The heat from the
compound leapt up and caught her in the face like
the blast from a furnace. She put a white topee
on her head and softly, lest she wake her mother,
stole out of the bungalow. She crossed the two
hundred yards of withering flame that lay betVveen
her and the forest, opened a tiny bamboo gate, and
began walking along a small track that dribbled in
and out between the towering stems.

In her ears was a constant deafening shrill
caused by the crickets that sunned themselves in
thousands on the leafless trees.

She walked oh and soon came to deeper forest,
where she sat down beneath the shadow of a huge
tree and took off her topee. Elise was now in her
beloved solitude.

Her parents decreed that two coolies should
always accompany her on these rambles, but she
was apt to forget certain orders where her freedom
was concerned.

Elise sat on. At her feet the sunflakes, striking
through the trees, moved noiselessly on the ground
like spotted deer. Plights of kingfishers and jays
whirred past her and disappeared into the green.
They were things of beauty, all blue and red and

•22 POO LORN OF THE ELEPHANTS

gold, splashing the atmosphere with vivid jabs of
colour. Somewhere a few '‘did-yoU“do-it” birds
were scolding from a tree. Then they found busi-
ness elsewhere, and silence descended on the
forest.

Gradually her ears distinguished further sounds.
She caught the distant clink of hobbles, which told
her that elephants were grazing in the vicinity.
Perhaps Poo Lorn was one of them. She would
walk along the path presently and see if she could
find him, but for the time being she was content
to rest.

Buds and nuts began to patter on to the ground.
She raised her head cautiously, to see four gibbons,
long-haired, silvery, with big dark sad eyes, sit-
ting on the branches. Slow as the movement of
her head had been, they scampered off, swaying
and “whooing” from tree to tree.

Blise laughed and rose and went on up the path.
The clinking of iron chains sounded closer, and she
came to an elephant shackled to a tree some twenty
yards to the right of the track. The animal bel-
lowed and lunged at her to the full extent of its
chain, and Eli.se shrank back into the undergrowth
that bordered the opposite side of the path. One
glance at the gleaming wicked little eyes told her
that here was Poo Taw, the elephant that her
father had on the previous evening ordered to be
shackled. Poo Taw was in a wicked mood, and
though Blise knew she was safe from him, she
shivered and ran hurriedly past.

In spite of the afternoon being on the wane, the
heat was growing more and more intense. The
sky had turned from a deep blue to a smoky-
coloured golden haze. But as it was only half-past
three she risked a storm and pushed on for another
mile in the hopes of coming across Poo Lorn.

ELISE COMES TO GREAT DANGER 23

She passed several more of the company ele-
phants, but of Poo Lorn there was no sign. At
last, when some muffled rolls of thunder boomed,
she gave up the search and turned back to the com-
pound, now two miles distant.

, She had not made more than a few hundred
yards when the light failed, and a sound as of the
roaring of many waterfalls rushed rapidly towards
her — rain and wind approaching over the tree-
tops. Elise darted behind a huge tree that had
been blown down.

With tropical suddenness the thunder-cloud
burst. Electric streamers flashed like skeleton
leaves against the blackness of the clouds; the
thunder boomed and crackled in continuous sal-
voes; the rain descended in solid sheets; ever and
anon some great tree could be heard crashing in a
riot of splitting timber.

The air became dank and cold. Elise, crouch-
ing behind her own fallen tree, shivered and snug-
gled up close against the rough bark. She knew
that these hot-weather storms soon blew them-
selves out, and not till the rain had ceased would
she go on. A thorough drenching spelt malaria,
followed by countless doses of nasty quinine and
several days in bed. Soon the storm passed as
suddenly as it had come.

Elise rose and began running back along the
path.

Bounding a sharp bend, she came full in sight
of an elephant standing directly on the little track.
Involuntarily she halted, and for several seconds
sheer terror froze her limbs. It was Poo Taw.
Behind him a tangled mass of broken branches
showed that the tree to which he had been shackled
had been uprooted by the wind. The hobble

24 POO LORN OF THE ELEPHANTS

chains, jerked apart in the crash, were now trailing
loosely behind him. Poo Taw was free!

For what seemed an age both girl and beast
stared at one another. Then, with a screaming
trumpet, Poo Taw charged. Quick as a cat Elise
leapt sideways into the jungle and ran for her life.
She held up both arms to protect her eyes from the
thorns and creeper that plucked at face and cloth-
ing. Soon her breath came in sobbing gasps;
specks flickered before her eyes; her hands and
arms were torn and bleeding, but she felt no pain;
she fought on blindly, desperately.

Bursting out on to a' second path, she stopped
and listened. Orashings and bellowings astern
showed that the beast was still on her trail.

Thoughts flashed through her mind. To climb
a tree was useless : a small tree an elephant could
knock down, while the larger ones here were all of
colossal height, with their lowest branches high
above the ground.

She glanced quickly to right and left along the
new path. Where it led she did not know, but
she realised at once that it might prove her salva-
tion. In the thick scrub Poo Taw would soon
have worn her down, but her chances would be
greatly increased on the open path.

As she swung into her stride she heard Poo T'aw*&
great bulk crashing out of the forest.

The girl was in perfect training, and she went
now like the wind. Presently she burst into a
large natural forest clearing, where she halted, sob-
bing with relief. On the farther side was a tree
that might be scalable. It was tall and heavy, but
its lower branches were not more than eight feet
above the ground. But as she darted forward, the
earth rose up and smote her. Blackness inter-
vened, and when her senses returned she found that

ELISB COMES TO GREAT DANGER 25

she had stumbled over a rotten branch. She en-
deavoured to struggle upright, but an agonising
pain shot through one of her ankles.

Another trumpet sounded back along the path.
Death, sure and irrevocable, had come to Elise.

Then something was standing in the shade close
by the tree she had thought to climb. It was diffi-
cult to make out clearly, so well it blended with

She saw Poo Lorn’s trunk curl round one of his enemy’s tusks.

the tricky patches of light that splashed through
the foliage, but hope leapt like a live thing into
her breast.

Poo Lorn the Terrible was glooming there, a
gigantic shadow. He stood motionless, his whole
being apparently concentrated on the scent of his
rapidly approaching enemy. Elise forced her
mind to action. Poo Lorn, hobbled, would stand

*26 POO LORN OF THE ELEPHANTS

no chance against the comparatively free Poo Taw.
Poo Lorn must have those hobbles taken off him.

She called to him, but he seemed oblivious of her
presence. He merely looked over and beyond her,
and a low bubbling note of wrath rose up from
somewhere within his giant body.

Elise nerved herself. If he would not come to
her, she must go to him. She began crawling
towards him. With failing hands she slipped the
hobbles off his forefeet. As through a haze she
saw Poo Taw storm into the clearing, and the two
great beasts shuffle towards one another; she saw
Poo Lorn’s trunk curl round one of his enemy’s
tusks and rip it out as a man plucks the stalk out
of a pear. Then a merciful oblivion blotted out
her senses.

CHAPTER Y

THE FIGHT AND ESCAPE OF POO LOEN

Bliss struggled to a sitting position. Her ankle
throbbed and pulsed, every limb in her body felt
bruised and shaken, while her mind was an aching
blank. She glanced round in dumb wonderment.
Where was this clearing in which she found her-
self, and why was it covered with a litter of fallen
trees and branches?

She fought with a dream, striving to be free.
Then, at one end of the clearing, she saw a huge
shape lying on its side, and another great form
bending over it. The dream vanished and with
startling vividness full memory returned. Her
heart galloped in her throat. Poo Lorn had been

THE FIGHT AND ESCAPE OF P00L0RN27

victorious, for he it was who now bent over his
fallen enemy.

Unable to tear her gaze away, Elise watched
until the elephant left his victim and stalked
majestically into the centre of the clearing. Curl-
ing up his trunk, he let out one great screaming
trumpet of defiance, and the immense volume of
sound, crashing through the trees, was taken up
by the surrounding hills. The echoes rolled and
faded. Silence descended on the forest.

Elise was white to the lips. No longer did the
jungle resemble a peaceful quiet glade ; it had
become a fierce harsh wilderness in which great
beasts fought and tore. She was back again in a
world of the past, a world where man was new
and vast leviathans roamed the earth. For, as
Poo Lorn stood thus in his might, he seemed the
very embodiment of the spirit of his mighty ances-
tors who had stalked the wild ranges when history
was dim. Elise felt suddenly very small.

The silence was broken. Poo Lorn bellowed
heavily and began striding round the clearing in
a free swinging gait. A fallen tree attracted his
attention, and, seizing it with his trunk, he flung
it like a match-stick into the surrounding tangle
of vegetation. He shuffled on a few more paces,
and for the first time saw the tiny figure of the
girl reclining on the grass. He bellowed again and
moved straight and fast towards her.

Elise crouched paralysed. She could not move,
she could not even think; she watched the giant
form loom up above her, stop in its stride, and,
motionless save for a constant swish of ears, stare
down at her.

Her stillness saved her life, for presently the
madness passed and sanity dawned on Poo Lorn
the Terrible. He felt this tiny white creature with

28 POO LORN OF THE ELEPHANTS

the tip of his trunk, and a nimble, deep and friend-
ly, sounded from within him. His friend was
recognised.

Elise heard the familiar sound. Life held
promise once more. Somehow she managed to
struggle to her feet and lean against Poo Lorn.
Oblivious of the blood that coated him, she touched
his rough skin with the tips of her fingers.

The air grew colder and the light failed rapidly,
Elise was forced to realities. Five o’clock had
come and gone, and by now her parents would be
thoroughly alarmed; yet here was she, lame and
stranded in the depths of the forest. Poo Lorn,
could she succeed in mounting him, would know
the way back to the distant compound, but how
was she to bend him to her will? Never, during
all the years that they had known one another, had
she given Poo Lorn a direct order, save to call
upon him to halt. Indeed, the friendship between
these two was founded on this very fact, but now
'circumstances forced her to make an attempt at
riding him.

She signed and ordered Poo Lorn to kneel, but
he made no effort to obey. Instead, he bellowed
warningly and backed several yards away from her.
Neither by word nor by gesture could she induce
him to budge an inch.

Elise was beginning to despair, when suddenly
a cry sounded through the jungle.

It came again, and Elise recognised the voice
of her father. She called back in reply, and soon
other voices could be distinguished.

She called a second time, then glanced at Poo
Lorn. He, too, had heard. Soon the coolies would
be upon the scene. They would close in upon him,
pick up the hobbles and bind them round his fore-

THE FIGHT AND ESCAPE OF POO LORN 29

hgs, and his brief period of freedom would become
a thing of the past.

But — Elise thought quickly — would Poo Lorn
suifer himself to be taken prisoner again? In his
present fierce mood there might be trouble; some
of the men, perhaps even her father, might be
killed or seriously injured, and Poo Lorn escape
in spite of them all.

And what of Poo Lorn himself? Had ha not
always craved for freedom? Moreover, she had a
debt to pay.

Tha shouts of men drew nearer, and Elise took a
deep breath. She forgot her pain, her weariness,
her recent trials. Pointing to the thickest part of
the jungle, she spoke in English :

“Quick, Poo Lorn. Go before they come.“

Perhaps the gesture influenced him; perhaps he-
was already rasolved. Whatever the cause, he
broke into his peerless raking stride and muffled
over the clearing. As he gained the fringe of the
jungle, Elise’ s high resolve suddenly collapsed like
a cooling bubble. She was losing the friend of a.
lifetime. For the first time she realised to the full
how much the giant creature had meant to her,
and involuntarily she stretched out both her arms
towards his retreating figure.

Suddenly, Poo Lorn swung round and faced her.
Elise looked dumbly at him. She wanted him to*
go : she wanted him to stay; perhaps after all he
was coming back. A strange gladness w^elled up in
her heart, only to sink again as a low trumpet,
sullen and menacing, rumbled through the quiet
evening air. Poo Lorn was warning the approach-
ing humans.

He turned again. For a second his great form
showed up against the green of the jungle, and

30 POO LORN OF THE ELEPHANTS
then Poo Lorn the Terrible had passed beyond the
ken of man.

An hour after dark that night, Elise was telling
her story. As the result of it, her father made a
double decision : he would report Poo Lorn’s loss
to his firm in Bangkok and to the up-countiy police,
as he was bound to do, but beyond that he would
leave the great animal to his freedom. Poo Lorn
had earned his right to the wilds for the rest of his
natural life.

John Morrison walked into the living-room of
the bungalow. He filled a glass, then returned to
the bedroom. He raised his glass.

“To Poo Lorn the Terrible,” said he, “and may
his great shadow never grow less.”

Meanwhile a very different scene was being
enacted in Check Lee’s house. Ai Kharn had burst
in upon the Chinaman, and his features were
ashen. Briefly the mahout related the events that
had come to pass. As ordered, he had met Check
Lee’s two men and the three had gone stealthily to
where Poo Lorn had been left to graze in the
jungle. As they crept along, the sound of the
white lord’s voice had been heard calling for his
daughter. Pearful lest they should be discovered,
Ai Kharn had pushed on alone, to find eventually
that Poo Lorn had escaped after killing an ele-
phant named Poo Taw. Thus their plan had come
to naught.

When Ai Kharn paused for breath, Check Lee’s
slit eyee dwelt long upon the speaker. He read
the mahout like an open book, and knew him to be
telling the truth, for his own two men had already
told him part of the affair, and the wildest rumours
were current in the village.

THEFJGHTANDESCAPEOFPOOLOEN 31

So. Check Lee reflected, by some strange chance
rather than through any fault of Ai Kharn, the
discomfiture of the Lord Morrison had been averted.
Check Lee hissed, but beyond a slight movement
of the body he showed no signs of annoyance. JLe
was far too big a man for that.

'‘So!” he said calmly. “And what does Ai
Kharn propose to do now for a living?”

“Perhaps the Great One would still give me a
position as his elephant-rider at twenty-five ticals
a month.”

But the Chinaman had no such intention; in-
deed, he never had. “Since no service has been
done me, I cannot give Ai Kharn this post.”

“Then will I stay with the Lord Morrison,”
replied Ai Kharn after a moment’s reflection. “Por
he will without doubt give me some other elephant
to ride, since it was through no fault of mine that
Poo Lorn escaped,”

It was the Chinaman’s turn to consider the posi-
tion carefully. He had at first intended to kill Ai
Kharn, for dead men tell no tales, but now he felt
inclined to revise this decision. If Ai Kharn re-
mained in the service of the company, the mahout
might possibly come in useful at some later date.
As for his ever mentioning the plot to his master,
for obvious reasons the man would be likely to keep
his lips well sealed; besides, even should he speak,
how would legal proof be forthcoming that an at-
tempt had been made at cutting Poo Lorn’s great
tusks?

Check Lee addressed the mahout. “To stay
with the Lord Morrison is good, but” — ^he fingered
his ivory-handled knife — “nothing of last night’a
conversation is ever to come to the ears of thy
master.”

S2 POO LORN OF THE ELEPHANTS

“Great One,” replied Ai Kharn fervently, “may
I be eaten by gold devils if I do not obey your
order.”

“There is one more little matter,” went on
Check Lee smoothly. “Yesterday I did hand over to
thee the sum of fifty ticals. "^^ere is it?”

“Great One, after I had left your house I went
to a gambling shanty. Great One, I did then lose
every one of those ticals.”

Check Lee hissed again. Whether Ai Kharn was
lying or not, the sum must be considered a total
loss.

“Go!” he said suddenly, and the mahout bowed
himself out of the room.

Presently came Ah Pong, the cook, with rice and
chopsticks. With expressionless face he served his
master, and neither exchanged a word during the
meal. The repast at an end, Ah Pong clattered
back to his kitchen on his small slippered feet.

CHAPTER VI

POO LOEN ENTEES EIS WILD KINGDOM

Immense, mysterious, Poo Lorn the Terrible surged
forward through the darkness, heading northwards
in his newly found freedom. He travelled all that
night and far into' the next morning, and then
halted to rest in the heat of the day. He drank
from a jungle pool, squirted streams of water over
his body, and with his forefeet kicked up some
loose earth into a little mound. This earth, he
seized with the curled end of his trunk and sent it
flying all over his damp body. Covered thus
with a thin layer of mud, he was protected from

POO LORN ENTERS HIS WILD KINGDOM 33

the myriads of stinging pe.sts that constantly
harassed him, and at leisure to graze in peace and
comfort. He fed for four hours and slept for two;
then on he went again.

At dusk next day he passed a herd of wild
elephants, and some young bulls, swinging round
at his approach, looked at him in threatening
fashion. At sight of them hi.s heart throbbed with
excitement; but, though the desire to join this herd
was strong within him, a greater urge was driving
him northwards. Accordingly, he passed unchal-
lenged and continued on his journey. He forded
bubbling rivers, climbed precipitous hills, crossed
treacherous ravines, clove through vast stretches of
tangled thorn country where an eternal twilight
reigned; but never once was he at fault for his direc-
tion. The blind nameless instinct, that had been
implanted in his soul for as long as he could re-
member, guided him with unerring accuracy to-
wards his distant goal.

Thirty days after leaving them, Poo Lorn return-
ed to this very same herd. The journey being over
and the object of his quest discovered, his wish
was now to mix with his wild brethren and become
their lord and ruler. He rolled slowly in between
the huge bulks on either side of him, whereupon
the herd abruptly left off grazing and called to one
another. The cows, vastly pleased to have some
cause for fright, squeaked and rapped in terror;
but not so some of the bulls. They advanced to-
wards him, unmistakable enmity in their gait.
None the less, awed by Poo Lorn’s huge size and
fearless mien, none of them dared to attack him.
They preferred to rumble with wrath and wait for
their leader to come upon the scene.

Soon a huge elephant, standing well over nine
feet at the shoulder, stalked majestically towards

34 POO LORN OF THE ELEPHANTS

Poo Lorn, the others making way for him as lie
came. The pair challenged, charged, and locked in-
terrible conflict. The old bull was wily, and being
the winner of countless other fights, at first took
this young intruder, large as he was, to be an easy
prey. As for Poo Lorn, though he stood a foot
higher than his antagonist, he found the wild tusk-
er a far worthier enemy than Poo Taw, and soon
he was fighting for his very life.

They screamed and bellowed across the dry bed
of a nullah, then lurched and stumbled into the
forest ‘again. Great trees were sent crashing by
the shock of their gigantic struggling bodies, the
noise of the falling branches mingling with the
shrill trumpetings in one vast paroxysm of sound.
Bamboo clumps were torn up and flung to one side
as if a whirlwind had passed; the earth was
churned, scarred, reddened with the fury of the
battle; huge boulders went rumbling and bounding
down the steep hill-sides; the very air seemed to
quiver with the uproar. Sleepy bjrown bears,
startled sambhur and barking deer, wild pig,
animals of every kind and description fled in terror,
for the kings of the jungle were battling, and well
they knew that any living thing that chanced to
cross their path would be trampled out of existence.

The battle ended as suddenly as it had begun.
The old tusker, staggering and bleeding from a
hundred wounds, gave up the struggle and shamb-
led off through the trees, to disappear for ever from
the sight of those whom he once had ruled. Poo
Lorn’s fresh young strength had prevailed, and
though he could have followed up and slain his
beaten enemy with ease, he forbore; he had, no
personal quarrel with the old bull beyond gaining
•the leadership of the herd, and this was now all
but accomplished.

POO LORN ENTERS HIS WILD KINGDOM 35

Poo Lorn returned to the herd. He flung up his
tusks, gleaming red and white in the fiery rays of
the sun. Proud and magnificent, he screamed
again his challenge. The remaining bulls bubbled,
threshed — then resumed their interrupted grazing.
Young though he was, Poo Lorn the Terrible had
entered his kingdom.

The months passed pleasantly for Poo Lorn.
Since his defeat of the old bull no animal ques-
tioned his right to leadership, and he was free to
take the herd to whatever haunts he chose. In
the main he elected to stay where first he had
found them, for the position was favourable. There
were large jungle streams with deep pools in which
they could bathe every morning and evening; there
were cool inviting clumps of bamboo under which
they could rest in the heat of the afternoon; and,
best of all, the grazing for miles around was plenti-
ful. The season Poo Lorn loved best was the rains.
Then the jungle leapt into life. Bamboos sprouted
and flourished; lush grass clothed the earth in
waving mantles of green; the trees thickened, tak-
ing and giving fresh life; rivers swirled, bubbled,
cleansed and soothed, and scurrying clouds hid the
merciless sun. This rainy season, that brought
sickness and death to human beings, brought only
added strength and enjoyment to him and his kind.

When the hot weather came, Poo Lorn led his
companions far afield. They sought for dark ever-
gfeen ranges where they could escape the pitiless
rays of the sun, for this giver of light and warmth
proved the elephants’ worst enemy. Under the
fierce glare of the cloudless sky the trees shed their
leaves and provided neither food nor shelter; the
earth became rough and hard, making the huge
beasts’ feet* sore and tender; the streams dwindled

36 POO LORN OF THE ELEPHANTS

to nothing, leaving beds of shining ■white stones in
place of cool running water; the whole jungle re-
sembled a harsh yellow wilderness, hostile, stern^
an enemy to life.

But Poo Lorn and his fellows had instinct to
guide them, and, though they travelled slowly in
order to give the cows time to rest and suckle their
little calves, they invariably found some shady re-
treat far up in the hills. Then, when the welcome
south-west monsoon came roaring and swirling over
the tree-tops, back they went to the old grazing
grounds, where fresh young grass would be spring-
ing up over countless miles of country.

Thus the seasons followed one another in pleasant
restful fashion; but when Poo Lorn had been some
eighteen months with the herd, danger threatened
in the shape of some men under the command of a
native chief.

This chief had tracked down the herd, and noted
the number and size of the animals. Now, with
the aid of flares and tom-toms, he was hopeful of
driving them into a large bamboo stockade he had
prepared for their reception. The chief and his
helpers were experienced men; for days they had
stealthily observed the movements of the herd, and
by keeping well to leeward of it, never once allowed
themselves to be scented. But they had reckoned
without Poo Lorn, who had behind him a full
twenty-five years' practical experience of man.

Though the cows are usually to be found in the
van of grazing herds, Poo Lorn had always been
careful to occupy this position himself, and now,
as he heard a clamour break out behind him, he
moved slowly forward. Soon he arrived at the head
of a nullah, where he halted abruptly. Evidently
danger in some form or another lurked' in the re-

POOLOBNBNTERSHIS WILDKINGDOM 37

cesses of the creek, else why did these men-animals
desire him and his companions to push on down it?

Poo Lorn swung round his bulk and, passing
through his flustered herd, approached the line of
humans behind them. They were shouting, yell-
ing, beating gongs, making a great deal of noise,
yet they did not appear formidable. Poo Lorn
therefore trumpeted with rage and at a fast shuffle
charged straight at the thin line of beaters.

The remainder of the animals, after a momentary
hesitation, followed him, with the result that the
dusky Laos and Kamoos were cast aside like chaff
before the wind.

Dropping their implements, they fled for their
lives, and, when the last of the elephants had dis-
appeared from view, hastened to the stockade,

38 POO LORN OF THE ELEPHANTS

where the chief was patiently awaiting the arrival
of his victims.

Their words were short and to the point. They
had been engaged, they said, to help in the work
of trapping elephants, not super-elephants.

Super-elephants? — ^the chief asked in puzzled
surprise. Yes, for at the head of this herd was an
elephant of the size of ten whole elephants in one.
(Here the Laos exaggerated — ^but they were very
scared.) This elephant had appeared large enough
when first they had seen it grazing in the forest,
but at close quarters it proved to be a veritable
monster. It was utterly fearless of them, they con-
tinued, and charged them in spite of the fact that
they yelled and shouted till their lungs well-nigh
cracked under the strain. They would take no more
part in the affair. This elephant was a devil, and
to have anything to do with devils was very bad
medicine indeed.

Even the chief turned white when he heard this
tale. He accordingly gave orders for camp to be
struck, and hurried by a short cut through the
forest to his home in Lakon Lampang, a native
town situated at the head of the Siamese railway.
The town lay a good hundred miles distant over
wild rolling country, but he completed the journey
in five days — no mean feat in the height of the rains.

Back in his little house, he paid off his coolies,
then burnt candles till far into the night in thanks
for his deliverance. Early the next morning some
of his friends came to see him. They squatted
on their hams on the split bamboo flooring; they
bowed and inquired courteously after the chief’s
health; they chewed much betel-nut; the pungent
smoke of native cigars encased in banana-leaf filled
the little room.

POO LOEN ENTERS HIS ",VILD KINGDOM 39

He told them of the venture : how, when first he
had been tracking the herd, he himself had seen
from a distance this vast elephant. Even then,
said he, it had been taller than the tallest coco-nut
tree; but when it had charged his coolies it had
swelled in size until it hid the very heavens. With-
out doubt it was a god or devil sent to protect wild
elephants from mankind. He had experienced a
merciful escape from death.

Presently the guests rose, bowed politely, and
slip-slopped out of marvelling greatly.

They went to theif n^ies, where they told their
friends, and by evening the whole town was agog.
Under the hissing flares of the market-place, Lao
girls talked between mouthfuls of rice-cake of this
wonder the chief had seen. Tiny brown picca-
ninnies pufPed at their cheroots and shrilled the
news to one another. Solemn brown men debated
the matter with streams of betel-juice and suckings
of breath. Even the khaki-clad police, gTouped
within the high wooden walls of the prison, heard
of the rumour and spoke of it with interest. But
they did not connect this huge wild elephant with
the name of Poo Lorn, whose loss had been re-
ported to them many months ago by the manager
of the teak company. They merely smiled with
flashes of white teeth, yavmed, drooped, rolled
over into slumber.

Night cloaked the little town of Lakon Lampang.
Light and sound vanished from the market-place.
Tall banyan-trees and palms guarded the horned
temples and slim pagodas of the faithful. Slumber
wrapped both man and piccaninny. At his stall
the patient ox drooped his head. The meek water
buffalo dreamed and stirred in his sleep, as if urged
to the plough he had pulled all day. Pariah dogs

40 POO LORN OF THE ELEPHANTS

curled — thin round yellow balk of forgotten misery.
The world gathered strength for the coming day.

Yet one white human being did not sleep. He
leant over the veranda railings of his bungalow and
stared with unseeing eyes into the scented dark-
ness. He did not hear the harsh croak of the bull-
frogs, the only other living things awake. Young
Richard .Cairns, fired by the talk he had heard in
the market-place, was planning his campaign.

CHAPTER VII

POO LORN LOSES HIS HERD

Richard Cairns was by profession an elephant-
trader. At the age of twenty-one he had been left
a comparatively large sum of money and had
decided to make a round tour of the world,
avoiding the beaten tracks and visiting those
countries that still remained comparatively free
from tourists.

In due course of time he arrived at Bangkok,
and went up-country to view the great teak forests
that stretch for mile upon mile over the north of
Siam. Arrived at the head of the railway, he hired
carrier coolies and made an extensive tour of the
north.

Soon the fascination of the jungles caught him,
as it had caught many a good man before. He
went on a few tiger-hunting expeditions, and then
his interest began to centre on the elephants, both
wild and tame, that abounded everywhere. He
met Shans, Burmese, Laos and Siamese who made
a living by rounding up wild elephants and selling
them to various native contractors and European

POO LORN LOSES HIS HERD 41

traders. Gould not he, too, do this? The work
would enable him to remain in or near the jungles
he loved, and yield him a handsome profit into the
bargain.

With his main base at Lakon Lampang, young
Cairns began elephant-trading. This new pro-
fession certainly proved exciting, but it did not
give him that handsome profit he had expected.
The cost of buying good tame tuskers, of hiring
coolies, forest guides and hunters, ate up most of
his remaining capital; and, cool and efficient though
he was, he experienced little luck in rounding up
any animals of real value. He persisted in his
efforts, however, only to find himself at the end
of two years back in Lakon Lampang with his
pockets well-nigh empty.

Now this strange tale of a gigantic tusker was
going the rounds of the town. That the creature
was a god or devil he did not believe. He, Eichard
Cairns, would capture this giant. Thus would his
fortunes be restored and a long stay up-country
assured him.

Early the next morning he hastened to the native
chief from whom the tale had sprung, and got
full details of the size and whereabouts of the herd.

Overcoming the fears of his coolies and mahouts
by the promise of a great reward, he set out with
his tame elephants. As the rains had not yet
cleared, he made no attempt at a short cut through
the jungle. An old cart-road, so hi.s map informed
him, ran for the first seventy miles or so, and along
this he jogged on his pony vrith his line of trans-
port trailing, out behind him. Though scarcely
recognisable as such, the road made better going
than the rough tangled paths of the jungle, and in
four days’ time he had arrived at the village of

i2 POO LOEN OP THE ELEPHANTS

Ban Tern. Here, according to the map, he should
strike off the road and proceed another sixty miles
in a northerly direction through the forest, and by
then he should be in the reputed grazing grounds
of the herd.

The first stage of his journey being completed,
he set up his tent for the night close by the little
village, for there a supply of fresh eggs and fruit
would be procurable. Soon old Lao women, tooth-
less and wrinkled, were visiting the camp with their
wares, and from them he learnt that a great white
lord lived in a bungalow set upon the hill. Cairns,
anxious to see one of his own race again, bathed
hurriedly, then strode up the slope towards the
company compound.

He found John Morrison alone in the bungalow
living-room, and the pair shook hands.

“YouTl stay to dinner,’’ said the manager as a
matter of course. '‘My wife and daughter will be
glad to see you. They’re dressing now.”

Young Cairns expounded his plans, and when
he had come to an end John Morrison gave vent to
a loud and prolonged whistle.

“That elephant’s Poo Lorn for sure,” said he.

“What!” exclaimed Cairns. “You’ve heard
of him?”

“I have,” answered the other dryly. “Poo
Lorn was one of my company elephants — a grand
beast, and the biggest tusker I’ve ever seen. Early
last year he escaped, and we haven’t heard a word
of him since. But I reckon this giant is Poo Lorn
right enough. Now that’s bad luck for you, young
man.”

It was indeed, but Cairns’ lean face betrayed no
sign of emotion. Should the elephant prove to be
Poo Lorn, he must surrender the animal to the
company to whom it rightly belonged.

POO LORN LOSES HIS HERB 43

*‘How much would give me if I recaptured
Poo Lorn?’’ he asked after a pause.

John Morrison frowned. He wished the elephant
to remain free, but he could scarcely prevent an
effort being made by some outsider. Moreover^
there were his firm’s interests to be considered.

“I’ll give you two thousand ticals if Poo Lorn
is absolutely unharmed,” he told his companion.

“Done, sir,” said Cairns briskly. The reward,
though much less than the full market value of
a tusker, was fair enough, and the remaining
animals of the herd would be his to sell outright.
The herd, so the chief had told him, consisted of
some eight bulls, sixteen cows, and a few young
calves ; a goodly number and a worthy bag.

The deal clinched, Cairns was introduced to the
manager’s wife and daughter, and dinner was
served by a dusky Lao boy in a neat white tunic.

“Poo Lorn,” said John Morrison as the soup
was handed round, “has been located. He’s been
found at the head of a wild herd grazing some sixty
miles from here. Mr. Cairns is out to capture him
again.”

“But Mr. Cairns mustn’t do anything of the
sort,” said Elise decidedly,

Eichard Cairns flushed. He was not used to
orders from any man, either white, black or brown,
yet here was this girl taking a hand in his private
affairs.

John Morrison laughed. “Sorry, Cairns, but my
daughter was rather a particular pal of Poo Lorn’s,
and when you’ve heard the story you’ll understand.
According to the natives, Poo Lorn’s sire was a
wild elephant, and the result was that he hated be-
ing hobbled. My daughter sympathised with him,
and then one day he actually did get loose and ”

“Anyhow, I’m sure Mr. Cairns won’t catch

44 POO LORN OF THE ELEPHANTS

Poo Lorn,” said Elise. ‘Too Lorn’s much too
clever to allow anyone to get the better of him.”

Cairns looked at her with interest. She was a
good kid, if a trifle spoilt, he decided, and he would
try to draw her out.

“We can’t allow sentiment to interfere with busi-
ness, Miss Morrison,” he told her. “Besides, I’ve
given your father my promise that Poo Lorn
doesn’t get hurt.”

“Oh,” exclaimed Elise, “1 don’t think it’s he
that will get hurt.”

No more mention of Poo Lorn was made till
dinner was over, and then Elise went straight up to
where the guest was standing.

“You’ve made up your mind? You’re still going
through with this?”’ she asked him suddenly.

“I’m afraid I must, Miss Morrison.”

“Mr. Cairns, Poo Lorn once saved my life.”

Eichard Cairns was as stubborn as she.

“I am sorry, but I cannot go back on my word,”
he said steadily.

She swung away from him and walked out on
to the veranda, leaving the others staring uncom-
fortably. A minute later she returned to the room.

“Forgive me. I’m spoilt, I suppose. Mr.
Cairns, forget my silly temper and make up a four
at bridge. We don’t often get the chance of a
game.”

They played till close on midnight, and then
Cairns rose to leave. His companions escorted him
to the gateway of the compound, where they shook
hands.

“I’ll be back within a month and tell you all
the news,” he said. “And many thanks for the
evening.”

“Take care of yourself,” said Mary Morrison

POO LORN LOSES HIS HERD 45

“Good luck to you, Cairns,” added her husband
cheerfully.

“Good luck to ... to Poo Lorn,” said Elise.

True to his word, on a rainy afternoon four
weeks later, Eichard Cairns came riding up t^
slope on his pony. The
meet him. -

“Fve got the herd ” 5 QfltrnC ^

out of the saddle and moppedl bis iroTjt;^

“But not Poo Lorn.” |

“Not Poo Lorn?” C ^

“No. He wa,sn’t with the omgrTwEen TPounded
them up.”

“H’m. Come on into the bungalow and have a
yarn,” said John Morrison.

Installed in a comfortable chair, the younger man
related his adventure. He had tracked down the
herd without much difficulty, but of Poo Lorn there
had been no sign, though his hunters had searched
far and wide for any elephant of unusual size.
Finally, giving up all idea of finding him, they had
concentrated on the capture of the herd itself. A
keddah of bamboo stakes had been built, and after
a few days the herd had entered like so many sheep.
The tame elephants were then sent into the keddah
to rope the wild ones, and after a few more days the
latter had quietened sufficiently to be led. Cairns
had then freed a few of the weaker animals, and
the remainder were now being brought by easy
stages on the long journey back to Lakon Lampang.

“And where are you camped now?” asked
Morrison.

“On the banks of the River Mae Lang, about
four miles from here. My elephants are there,
too.”

46 POO LORN OF THE ELEPHANTS

‘'Well,” Blise said, “I think everything has
happened for the best. Mr. Cairns has bagged a
lot of wild elephants as a reward for his trouble,
and Poo Lorn goes free. It’s funny that Poo Lorn
should have gone off on his own like that.”

“Are you sure, Cairns, that you haven’t been
after a different herd?’-

“Positive, The number of animals was the
same, and their description tallied exactly with the
information given me by the chief.”

“Daddy, now I come to think of it, wild
elephants are known sometimes to leave their herds
for several weeks on end, but they always come
back to them sooner or later. What I’d like to
know is — where do they go on these lonely
journeys?”

“Where do they go?'* echoed her father. “No
one knows. I doubt if anyone ever will know.
That’s one of the elephants’ secrets.”

“And I’d also like to guess,” continued Blise,
“what Poo Lorn will do when he returns and
finds his herd missing.”

“Join another one, I expect,” answered her
father, “Cairns, you’ll stay to tea and dinner?”

“Thanks, sir, but I must be riding back to my
camp.”

But John Morrison had no intention of allowing
his visitor to leave so soon. He, Morrison, had
now grown too old for a good deal of the hard work
of forest inspection, and already his head offices in
London were writing to him on the subject of his
retirement. An assistant, so they said, would re-
quire at least two years’ practical experience of the
jungle before qualifying for the post of manager,
and they were therefore considering engaging a re-
liable youngster and sending him out to be trained.

Yet whom would they send? This question had

POO LORN LOSES HIS HERD 47

been Morrison’s constant nightmare. Head office
might choose someone totally unsuited to rough
work and hardship. Worse still, they might send
out a man who would soon give way to loneliness
and drink. Fearful of this, and loath to leave the
country he loved so well, Morrison had so far suc-
ceeded in delaying the choice of a new assistant, but
now he realised that his bosses would W’ait no
longer. A letter must be ivritten at once, inform-
ing them that they could go ahead.

Morrison glanced at his lean sunburnt com-
panion. If he read young Cairns aright, here was
just the man for him. Cairns was clean, hard,
■deadly keen on the forest, and he spoke the Lao
and Siamese dialects like a native. Cairns should
be sounded.

“Why ride back to your camp and spend a night
in a damp tent when I’ve got a spare bungalow in
the compound for you? A rest in a comfortable
bed would do you good,” he said.

“It’s an idea,” said the other.

“Then that’s settled. I’ll send a coolie out to
tell your men you won’t be back till the morning,
and Elise can get your bungalow ready. Mean-
while, here is tea.”

Later it rained heavily, and the two men with-
drew to Morrison’s private room.

“This trading in elephants — do you make much
money at the game?” he ventured.

“Not much,” confessed the other. “Though
this last batch ought to put me on my feet again.”

“Still, it’s a risky business, isn’t it?”

“It is.”

“Then why carry on at it? Couldn’t you get
41 job in England or Bangkok?”

“Yes, but I’d rather stay oh up here.”

Morrison glanced through the open window.

48 POO LORN OF THE ELEPHANTS

All round the back and sides of the compound the
jungle crept. It was dark, gloomy, dripping with
moisture and breathing of death. The rains hung
over the forest like a pall.

“You mean to tell me,’' he said, “that you
prefer these sodden jungles, when you’re not even
sure of a decent return?’’

“Yes, and I believe you’d do the same.’’

Morrison decided. Here sat the very man for
the job.

“There’s a way,’’ said he slowly, “in which
you can remain in the jungle, and earn a decent
salary.’’

“I wish I knew of it.’’

“It’s simple. I’m retiring in a couple of years.
Why not become my assistant, learn the work,
then take over my forest when I retire?’’

“You mean that, sir?’’

“I do. Think it over. You’ll have as much
jungle-life as you’ll want, going rounds of inspec-
tion in the forest, and you’ll have a comfortable
compound and bungalow to return to after the
trips. But don’t hurry in your decision.’’

“I’ve already made it,’’ broke in Cairns. “But
what about you, Mr. Morrison? You’ve only seen
me twice.’’

“That’s my own look-out,’’ answered the other
dryly. “Now why not stay on as my guest for
another two or three days? That will give you
time to consider the matter fully and enable me to
explain some of the work to you.’’

“But what about my elephants?’’

“They will be all the better for a rest. You can
keep them in your present camp, and ride out and
inspect them every morning.’’

“I will,’’ said Cairns fervently.

“Then, at the end of your stay with us, and if

THE VENGEANCE OF POO LORN 49

you decide on the job, I’ll write Bangkok and
London. They will agree, but it will take three
months to get London’s reply, and meanwhile you
can take your elephants into Lakon Lampang and
sell them there. That will start you on your new
work with a nice sum of money at your back. Can
do?”

Eichard Cairns drew a deep breath.

“Can do, sir,” he said, “and I hope I don’t
make too much of a fool ot‘ myself at the job.”

CHAPTER vin

THE VENGEANCE OP POO LOEN

Poo Lorn, after a prolonged absence in the north,
was back again in his grazing grounds. But where
was his herd? He cruised around in the neighbour-
hood, and soon he discovered an empty stockade
consisting of sharp bamboo stakes that had been
sunk into the ground. He circled it, then left it
for further investigations. After a while he came
across one or two old cows and a decrepit tusker,
but his followers as a herd had ceased to exist.

Poo Lorn’s brain moved slowly, as if unable to
fathom the extent of this disaster. And then he
struck a trail. The trail was easy to follow, for
many elephants had passed along it, and here and
there the remains of man-made camp-fires littered
the jungle clearings. Pausing only for brief inter-
vals to rest and feed, Poo Lorn swung along this
trail till he came out on to the bank of the Eiver
Mae Lang.

Here a path ran along the bank parallel to the
river, and up it he proceeded till the noise of distant
trumpetings sounded on his ears. He now went

50 POO PORK OF THE ELEPHANT

forward more cautiously, and shortly he scented
men-animals and heard their chatter. This caused
]]im to leave the path and seek again the shelter
of the fringing jungle, through which he pushed
his great bulk without so much as the crackling of
a branch. A few hundred yards’ progress brought
him to the edge of a large clearing. Halting, he
peered through the leafy screen and l'>eheld a
strange sight.

Tethered to various trees surrounding the clear-
ing stood the majority of his wild companions,
while near them were several tame elephants whom
he did not recognise. Every now and then a brown
man would bring fodder and throw it down before
the captured beasts, then walk across the open
space to where some rough bamboo shelters had
been erected.

Poo Lorn made neither sound nor movement till
a new scent came down the wind, whereupon he
swayed from side to side and bubbled with sup-
pressed wrath. A white man had ridden into the
clearing and dismounted. He saw the white man
inspect the tethered elephants, speak a few words to
the mahouts and coolies, then spring on his pony
again and ride hurriedly away to the north. Once
the man was out of sight Poo Lorn ceased his bub-
bling, and, after putting a good mile between him
and the clearing, halted a second time and brooded.

So the herd he had ruled had been captured in
his absence, and by the white man of all people!
It was the white man who had first caused Poo
Lorn to be bound to posts, then kept in bondage
for year upon year; it was the white man who
caused both mahout and elephant to slave at heavy
timber-w’ork; and now this white man had done
this final and terrible wrong to him.

Poo Lorn rumbled and threshed. To him John

THE VENGEANCE OF POO LORN 51

Morrison and Richard Cairns were one and the
same : they possessed the same scent and wore the
same clothes. They were the only living creatures
he had seen upon horses, and in consequence of
this Poo Lorn’s fierce soul was consumed with
wrath that cried aloud for vengeance.

To rescue his companions seemed impossible,
nor could his brain fathom what he should do to
bring this about. One course, however, did re-
main, and that was to lay waste the compound at
Ban Tern and trample to death the man he hated.
In his sullen rage the memory of the little girl who
had once been his friend was lost; he was now an
engine of destruction, and destroy he would.

Though the desire for action was hot in his mind,
he did not hurry. The night was the time for him
to strike, since then the humans slept. He there-
"fore remained in the forest till close on midnight,
and then he swung into his stride. Though the
clouded sky made the darkness as black as pitch,
his eyes were capable of dilation far beyond the
power of any human, and he pressed through the
jungle as if in broad daylight. He knew every
inch of his present surroundings, and found the
path by the river with ease. He passed the clear-
ing where his elephants were tethered, and no one
saw him go by, for the whole camp lay deep in
slumber. He sWck the little track that led to Ban
Tern.

An hour later he had reached the outskirts of
the village. Here a sudden impulse caused him to
move straight ahead instead of swinging ofi to the
left up the hill towards the hated white man’s com-
pound, and shortly the sleeping market-place wal-
led up on either side of him.

He came to a standstill, towering up on the
muddy lane like a huge shadow, as black as the

52 POO LORN OF THE ELEPHANTS

night that clothed him. The last time he had been
in this self-same village a mahout had sat astride
his neck, and chains were upon him. But now he
was free to use his gigantic strength as he liked.

He approached the tallest of the dwellings, which
happened to be the teak house of Check Lee, the
-evil Chinaman. Luckily for that gentleman and
his secretary, both were absent on some secret
business over the border, and they thus escaped a
highly unpleasant fate, for Poo Lorn was no bung-
ler. The house was built on tall stilts to protect
the owners from the dampness of the rains and any
possible attack from wild animals, and round one
of these stilts Poo Lorn curled his trunk. He
heaved, the post snapped like a twig, and the whole
building swayed. Two more posts were quickly
spilt in half, whereupon the Chinaman’s house
crashed sideways.

The noise awoke the inhabitants of some huts
near by. They rushed out on to the pathway,
heard strange rumblings and bello wings, screamed
hurried warnings, and fled for their lives up the
hill.

Having trampled the broken house under foot,
Poo Lorn proceeded to further destruction., Several
more shanties along the line were hurled down and
pounded to pieces, while the remainder of the vil-
lagers rushed wildly to safety without so much as
a thought for their scanty possessions.

Pandemonium reigned in the little hamlet. Men,
women and children screamed and yelled, then
vanished into the night; chickens clucked, flut-
tered, beat frenzied wings; squealing pigs wal-
lowed and slithered round the mud beneath the
houses; from their pens bullocks bellowed hoarsely
and stamped; several water buffaloes, freeing
themselves from the stakes to which they were

THE VENGEANCE OF POO LORN 53

tied, went galloping down the market-place, bleat-
ing in alarm; and, to add to the uproar, the howls
and barks of countless pariah dogs rose up from
every quarter.

Suddenly the clamour from the animals of the
village came to an end, for Poo Lorn had made off
to another destination. He now stalked up the hill
towards the compound, where, unknown to him,
the majority of the brown people had fled, seeking
John Morrison’s protection.

The Laos had assembled in the huge garden, and
at their head stood the white manager, accom-
panied by Richard Cairns. John Morrison grasped
a shot-gun, and his companion a bamboo spear
taken from the office. Each stared intently through
the gloom.

A muffled trumpet sounded in the darkness below
the rising ground, and a shiver went through the
waiting crowds, some of whom carried flares that
lit up their brown faces. The manager nudged
Cairns’s arm.

“Heaven knows why we’re holding these weap-
ons,’’ he whispered. “They are about as much use
as a pea-shooter and a toothpick for what we are
up against.’’

Cairns grinned mirthlessly. A spear and a shot-
gun to ward off the attack of an elephant !

“Remember,” the elder man said, “if the
animal charges, you take care of the mob that
bolts to the right, while I go with those that run
in the opposite direction. After that, don’t allow
’em to bunch together too much/’

“I’ve got you,” said Cairns. “Hallo, who’s
this?”

A white form sprang out of the darkness, and
both men turned to see Elise rushing towards
them.

54 POO LORN OF THE ELEPHANTS

“Father,” she panted, “it's Poo Lorn. It must
be. Let me go ahead and meet him before he
reaches the compound. I can stop him from doing
any damage. I simply know I can.”

For once John Morrison was almost rough with
his daughter. He had put her, together with her
mother and some of the women and children of the
village, behind the pony stables at the extreme end
of the compound, for his past experiences of rogue
elephants told him that they invariably avoided any
spot where ponies had been tied. Between horse
and elephant a sense of fear and distrust apparently
existed, and Morrison had therefore given Elise
strict orders not to stir from the lee of the stables;
yet here she was, offering to go out, alone and un-
protected, and meet the terrible death that ever
drew nearer.

He seized her arm.

“Nothing living could stop him now, child, only
a dose of cold metal. Cairns, hold my gun while I
take Elise back.”

By the time John Morrison returned to the side
of his companion, Poo Lorn had arrived at the
gates of the compound. The gates were shut, but
he simply went straight through them. A moment
later he was striding across the lawn. He saw the
black mass of people, but he did not fear them or
their flares. Curling trunk over tusks, he charged.
The humans scattered to right and left, and the
dim shape of the white man’s bungalow rose behind
where they had been. Poo Lorn made for the
bungalow. As he did so a loud report sounded
and he received a sharp sting in the side, of which
he took no notice whatever. He shuffled straight
on, intent on the bungalow.

Arrived there, he immediately began operations.

Like the Chinaman’s, the building was supported

THE VENGEANCE OF POO LORN o5

on posts made of heavy squares of teak and stronger
far than any in the village. Poo Lorn, therefore,
made no attempt to pull at them, but stooping,
placed the thick root of his trunk against the
stoutest. He then heaved with the whole might
of his body, and the post split and fell.

After two more had been dealt with, he drew
back a few paces from the bungalow, for he was
no fool. Many a time he had cleared piled-up stacks
of teak logs in the river, and he knew the danger
as they came tumbling and crashing down. This
bungalow, too, was large and heavy, and he realised
that he must keep at a safe distance when it fell.
He therefore went round to the jutting-out front
veranda, which he began pushing with the ends
of his tusks.

Soon the whole building swayed. John Morrison
drew in his breath. It cut him to the quick to see
his home destroyed, yet he avoided a second shot.
To wound the elephant again would only enrage
him, while if he were left to work his will un-
hindered he might return to the forest without hav-
ing killed a single human being.

Poo Lorn, undisturbed by such trifles as pellets
from a gun, pushed mightily at the swaying bunga-
low. It lurched over sideways, hung poised for a
second, and then collapsed like a pack of cards. He
trod and thrust savagely at the ruins, after which
he turned to the other big building in the com-
pound. This chanced to be the company’s office,
which was built on a level with the ground. Since
he could not knock it down, he contented himself
with shattering one of the walls and ripping up
part of the roof. The wall, as it bulged inwards,
sent writing-desks flying in all directions. Letter-
files, ink bottles, surveying maps, typewriters and

56 POO LORN OF THE ELEPHANTS

foolscap littered the floor, and the records of years
were rendered useless. Poo Lorn’s revenge was
far greater than he realised.

At last, satisfied that he could do no more, he
began striding round the compound, seeking for
the white man. Vaguely aware of figures flying
hither and thither, and of a confused crying and
shouting, he became bewildered. He swung in un-
certain fashion from one part of the garden to the
other, and finally came to the conclusion that he
was tired. His trunk was sore and swollen, his
sides were scarred, and his giant legs ached with
weariness. The peace and quiet of the jungle called.

Therefore he plunged into the forest at the back
of the compound. He passed some of the hobbled
elephants of the company, who chirruped nervous-
ly, but these he ignored, and soon was several
miles away from the village. Selecting a patch of
long thick grass, he halted and brooded.

On the morrow he would return to his deserted
grazing grounds, and there he would stay alone
for the rest of his life. No more company for him !
The presence of wild companions might bring
humans to the spot again. No, he would remain
solitary, but — should these humans ever attempt to
recapture his own giant body, he would deal wdth
them in dire and terrible fashion.

Poo Lorn the Terrible , brooded alone in the teak
forest. Pive miles away brown men wept, cursed,
squalled and yelled, but the w^hites wasted no time
bemoaning their fate. They comforted the fright-
^ened, cared for the homeless, worked all through
the night and far into the following morning.

Eichard Cairns, as for hour after hour he toiled,
carried two visions in his heart. One was of Poo"
Lorn the Terrible. Clothed by the night, he had
appeared to be of almost uncanny size and

THE VENGEANCE OF POO LORN 57

grandeur. Trumpeting, bellowing, tearing down
huge buildings as if they were stacks of cardboard,
Poo Lorn had indeed resembled some terrific god of
vengeance, and the sight of him had been aw^e-
inspiring to the last degree. Though he lived for
a hundred years, young Cairns would never forget
that night.

The other vision was very different. A small
white face, with shining eyes and hair, swam out
of the gloom, and again he heard that offer to meet
almost certain death.

“That girl,” muttered Cairns to himself, as he
carried a tiny homeless brown mite to shelter,
“ that girl can’t know w^hat fear is. I wish I could
sav the same for myself.”

PAET II

CHAPTER IX

UNDERSTANDING

Two years had gone by since Poo Lorn's raid, and
now the village of Ban Tern and the company
compound looked much the same as ever. The
brief tropical winter was at hand, and the harvest
due to be gathered. The rice-fields waved green
and gold in the clear sunlight. Beyond the village
the River Mae Lang flowed like a silver ribbon, and
no sandbars showed. The jungle expanded and
breathed again. The sky was cloudless, but the
air was cool and refreshing.

In the new bungalow built by her parents, Elise
sat and dreamed. Soon, in a few short weeks, her
father and mother would be leaving the country
for an unknown world of civilisation, and she by
rights should accompany them.

Elise sighed, 'Whether she remained in Ban
Tern or left for England, there would he partings
that w^ould wrench at her very heart,

Elise glanced at her watch. Richard was often
late, so keen had he become on his work. Often
he was absent for a whole month on prolonged
jungle tours, and when he did come back she would
see but little of him.

At first he had been inclined to treat her rather
as a child, but that had quickly passed. As he
learnt that she could ride and swim as well and
fearlessly as he, a frank, healthy companionship
between the two had begun; but of late this, too,

60 POO LORN OF THE ELEPHANTS

had changed. Why did he not speak? Perhaps he
was afraid of her; perhaps he did not wish to take
her from her parents; perhaps ....

Blise returned to the present. She sprang from
her chair and hastened out on to the veranda, for
her ears caught the sound of a pony’s hooves gallop-
ing over the grass. She saw Richard pull the pony
to a standstill, fling the reins to an attendant syce,
then walk with free swinging stride over to his little
bungalov at the farther end of the compound.

She knew he would soon emerge, bathed and
refreshed, and either make his way to the office
or else come straight for her father’s bungalow.
She waited for half an hour, and then, clad in a
white drill suit in place of his rough khaki jungle-
wear, he hurried along the gravel path that led
directly towards her. She waved and ran down
into the compound to meet him. She saw that
under his bronze he was very pale.

‘‘Elise, come into the jungle. I want to talk to
you.” The words were terse, peremptory, harsh
almost.

She made no reply, but suffered herself to be led
across the compound and through the little gate
into the dark green of the forest beyond. They
went a few hundred yards along one of the jungle
paths, then he stopped abruptly and faced her. He
was white now to the lips.

Overhead the leaves stirred and whispered to the
breeze. Tall arches of bamboo bowed their fronds
in a stately dance. A jungle stream, clear, cool,
fringed with moss and delicate ferns, murmured
and soothed. Evening dreamed sweetly over a
fairy world. No pain, no sorrow, no tears existed
in this world, for beauty only reigned.

John Morrison, his work in the office at an end.

UNDERSTANDING 61

crossed over to his bungalow. Mary left her task
of pruning roses and joined him.

, “It’s come,” she said simply, and he knew at
once what she meant.

John sank into a chair and hid face in hands.
His forest was soon to be taken from him, and
now his daughter, whom he loved better than any
forests in the world, would also be leaving him.
But it was the law of life; it had to be and he
would not complain.

“There’s just the two of us now, old ladv,” said
he.

The stars frosted the heavens. A whistling teal
flew overhead with a high thin treble note. Cold
mists wreathed the compound, but in the cheerful
bungalow living-room, as a clock chimed midnight,
the two men sat smoking.

“I suppose I ought to give you some advice,
young fellow,’’ said John Morrison.

Cairns coughed to hide his confusion.

‘'You think it’s about Elise I’m going to talk,”
went on the other suddenly. “Well, it’s not. If
there’s one thing that least concerns other people,
it’s a man’s marriage. You’ve got Elise, and I
think you’ll make her happy. No, it’s about the'
forest that I’d like to speak to you.”

Cairns breathed a sigh of relief and settled down
to listen. John Morrison had lived the better part
of his life in jungle surroundings, and any hint that
the old man could give was welcome.

“Eemember, Cairns, in working the forest
you’A^e got to give elephants pride of place in your
thoughts, for without them you can’t get a single
teak log down to the mills in Bangkok. Now
you’ve seen all the company elephants during the

62 POO LOEK OF THE ELEPHANTS

time you’ve been with us, and I guess you think
you know a bit about ’em now, eh?”

“I reckon I know the name, appearance and
character of every animal in the force,” said Cairns
proudly.

“Well, it’s more than I do. I may know their
names and general appearance, but I’m hanged if
I know all their characteristics. You’ll soon find
out, Cairns, that the more experience you have of
elephants the less you’ll understand them.”

“You have me there, sir,” confessed Cairns,
grinning. “Carry on.”

“Now take the elephants in our force. They’re
about as mixed a lot as one could imagine. Some
don’t like river-work, as the rush of the water
frightens them; some don’t like hill-work, though
why I’ve never been able to make out; some don’t
like other elephants; while some can’t stand the
sight of certain coolies or mahouts. Some won’t
allow themselves to be hobbled on their forelegs,
so their hindlegs have to be bound. Again, some
have very particular pals and it’s a waste of time
trying to separate them from their chums. Yes,
Cairns, you know all that, of course, but has it
ever struck you why the brutes have such queer
likes and dislikes?”

“I should think they hardly know themselves.”

“That’s just where you’re wrong. They do. kn
elephant never behaves in a certain fashion vdth-
out cause, and it’s part of your job to find out what
that cause is. I remember a baggage elephant of
mine who was always giving trouble on the march.
Whenever she came to a sharp bend in a jungle
path she would halt and trumpet, ana it required
a good mahout to make her move.

“I thought that curious. I made inquiries into
-her history, to discover that years ago she once

UNDERSTANDING

6a

rounded a blind corner and almost trod on a pan-
ther. It slashed at her, then bolted; but she never
forgot the incident. Well, as soon as I heard of
this I tried a remedy. Up till then she had always
travelled ahead of my other baggage elephant, but
now I put her behind. Eesult, I never had trouble
with her again. If a panther happened to be
lurking around some corner, her companion would
get his attack first and she would be safe. I
reckon that’s how she figured it out.

''Natives need some understanding, too.” con-
tinued Morrison. “Here are a few last tips before
we go to bed. Natives are like children and must
be treated as such. Never lie to a coolie, never
argue with him. Once your decision is taken on a
point, never go back on that decision even should
it prove to be a wrong one. When your men are
tired on the march, make ’em laugh, and the simp-
ler the joke the better, for they don’t understand
sarcasm in the least. 'Make some plain direct
statement about the raggedness of somebody’s
pants you happen to see, and on they’ll go for
miles, laughing for all they’re wurth. xAigain.
never hit a native unless he insults you personally.
Then hit, and hit hard.”

“I will,” said Cairns grimly.

“One last wurd. You haven’t seen much of
Check Lee, the Chinaman down at the village, and
I hope you won’t. Still, keep your weather eye on
him. He’s a villain if ever there was one. And
now good night and good luck to you.”

CHAPTER X

A JOUENEY AND A PAETING

Long lines of carrier coolies trudging along the
dusty cart-road; the squeaking of stirrup leathers
and sweating of ponies; tall stems of forest trees
bordering the countless miles of the road; then wide
open paddy-fields of coarse brown stubble and the
little native town of Lakon Lampang.

The train pulls out of the town station on its
four-hundred-mile journey to the south. A roaring
mi thrumming of wheels; ravines, bubbling rivers
and waterfalls; wild rolling hills clad in the peace
of the jungle; then the flat plains of Central Siam.
Vast paddy-land again, dotted with white egrets
•and meek water-buffalo. Villages; huge desolate
spaces; more villages. The dwellings of man in-
crease and the villages become a continuous wall.
Spacious villas, white railings, a race-course, the
hissing of steam, whistles, the flares of wooden
sparks, a huge cool station. Bangkok.

Sweetly running cars. The native quarter. The
pad pad pad of perspiring rickshaw coolies. Ghar-
ries with white-turbaned Indian drivers; hens;
^ collision narrowly averted; the brown neck of the
Malay chauffeur at the wheel; pigs; the sickly
smell of durian; Chinamen; vendors of rice cakes;
jellow Siamese women; whiffs of rotting vegeta-
tion— the native quarter far astern.

The New Eoad. Trams, clanging of bells; shops
hig and small; blue panungs, white panungs, scar-
let panungs; Europeans and their fine ladies; a

A JOURNEY AND A PARTING 65

sharp turn to the left and broad open roads with
gardens on either side.

A hotel. Clip-clop clip-clop clip-clop — a Chinese
boy brings an iced drink. Ice. A coolness past
belief. A bath in a real bathroom, and a real
dinner served by real waiters in a real dining-room.

A mosquito-net, huge and airy. The soft drone
of an electric fan. Comfortable sleep. Then the
fierce sun strikes through the shutters and sleep is a
thing of the past. A hurried toilet with hands
that fumble and seem all thumbs. Then a car
again and the dark coolness of a church.

A clergyman appears from nowhere and mur-
murs. Blurred shapes. A crowd. Handshakes.
The clinking of glasses. Interminable delay. At
last a departure for the wharf, and a steamer looms
up against the tossing waters of the river.

The low mangrove swamps on the banks sweep
by and the sea receives the steamer. Flying-fish
spread out like fans on either bow. Chinese junks
— slow, cumbrous, barge-like — veer past. The day
is alive with colour and the night with stars. And
both are magic, since the most wonderful dreams
have come true.

Java. Queer pony-carts, tidy Dutch settlements,
all pleasant green lawns and smooth veranda.
Trips up through coffee and sugar plantations to
huge volcanic mountains.

Then the voyage back to Bangkok. A last
handshake there with the old people, and a hurried
departure for the north-bound train. Once more
the thrum of wheels, then the familiar march back
along the cart-road through the forest. Tall coco-
nut trees; the dusty market-place of the village of
Ban Tern; the slope of the hill; Kamoo and Lao
coolies bowing low before them. So Eichard and
Elise entered their domain.

66 POO LORN OF THE ELEPHANTS

That night, their first night as master and mist-
ress of the compound, Eichard remained alone for
some time on the outside veranda. A cool wind
fretted and he drew great gulps of it into his lungs.

Around him, mantled in gloom, stretched a
thousand square miles of forest, and now he was
lord of all that vast area. Under him were one
hundred and fifty timber-working elephants, five
hundred coolies, mahouts and chainmen, and
dozens of felling camps and girdling parties. Even
the inhabitants of the various little villages scat-
tered throughout the forest would render him fealty
now that he had become the number one great
white lord of the district. Almost limitless power
lay in his grasp, and he gloried in the knowledge.

But with power came responsibility, and I3airn&
was not one who shirked his duties. As he could
order both man and beast to bend to his will, so
must he help them in sickness and distress. Should
the villages report danger in the shape of a man-
eating tiger or leopard, he must go quickly to their
aid. Should his coolies go sick, he must bring
them back to health and strength again. As for
his elephants, he must watch, tend, doctor and try
to understand these giant beasts. A grand task,
he mused, and better far than the wastefulness of
any big-game hunting expedition.

Elise was another and even greater responsibi-
lity. The wilds he could handle, but could he
keep her safe and happy? He was alone in a
foreign land. No white man lived within one
hundred miles of him, and all the decisions, all the
burdens, now lay upon his own pair of shoulders.
Well, he, Eichard Cairns, would not be found
wanting in this great new test, Elise would ever
come first and foremost in his thoughts.

That night, John Morrison, too, sat thinking

A JOURNEY AND A PARTING 67

aloue in the darkness. The sea wind was on his
brow and its murmur in his ears, but he neither
heard nor felt it. He was back in the land he
loved. He forgot the tortures of a fevered brain,
the mud, pests and discomfort of a jungle life. He
remembered only the thrill of it all.

Ahead of him lay England, with every luxury
that his savings could buy. Yet England to him
was a strange country peopled by strangers who
had different tastes, different ideas, different inodes
of life. The wnrd “home” was on every man's
lips save his. He was leaving home.

The ship lurched, for, though the monsoon had
not yet broken, the sea was choppy. Morrison
olutched the windward rails and the harsh black
waters caught his eyes. The moon was racing over
scudding clouds and the Southern Cross reeled low
down in the sky. Pale shadows swept across the
ohill waste.

A door opened behind liim and a flood of yellow
light rayed across the deck. A gust of laughter
and tobacco smoke wafted through from the smok-
ing saloon.

Morrison shivered and strode along the deck.

The hatchway received him. He descended the
Sadder and zigzagged along a narrow alleyway
between white-painted walls. Arrived at his cabin,
he opened the door. Mary was in her bunk, read-
ing by a light sunk in at the head of the bed. She
fimiled at him sleepily.

“Had your nightcap, old man?”

“I'm a fool,” said, he; “but I somehow can't
face that crowd. Too much living alone, I sup-
pose.”

“But you must go into the saloon some time,
dear. Why not get it over now? I’ll tell you what.
Drink to our next visit to Siam.’-

68 POO LORN OF THE ELEPHANTS

‘‘Mary, you’re talking in your sleep.”

“Indeed, I’m not. You see, though you’ve left
the forest as manager, there’s no reason why you
shouldn’t go back there as a visitor, is there?”

“No, but . . .” Morrison paused. “It wouldn’t
be fair on the young people. They’d think we’d
come back to see how they were running the show.”

“Oh, but we wouldn’t go back just yet, for we
both need a few years of England to set us up again
first. After all, you’re still on the right side of
sixty, John. Don’t forget that.”

“I was forgetting it,” he admitted, “but I’m not
now.” And John Morrison fairly bounced into the
saloon.

CHAPTER XI

A GEEAT ADVENTUEB IS PLANNED

That year the rains broke heavily, and Cairns
found many duties on his hands. During his two
years’ apprenticeship under John Morrison he had
discovered many magnificent teak trees in certain
parts of the forest that had been too remote and
hilly for the elder man to penetrate. These trees
had been girdled at the time, and now had to be
felled, logged, measured and hammered, then
dragged by elephant to the nearest jungle stream.

This work of felling and dragging could be car-
ried out only in the rains. In the hot weather the
precious trees would either split as they crashed to
earth, or else run the risk of being burnt in the
dry creeks by the numerous jungle fires. In the
rains, however, the tree stems were soaked with

A GEBAT ADVENTURE IS PLANNED 69

moisture, the ground was damp and soft, and the
streams became bubbling yellow torrents. For day
after day, therefore, Cairns had his camp set in a
^tiny forest clearing, from which he set out every
morning to supervise the work.

One rainy afternoon in the middle of August
Bichard Cairns was carried into the compound on
the back of an elephant. His feet and ankles were
covered with sores caused by leech-bites and const-
ant soaking in muddy water; bis blood, poisoned by
the stings of countless anopheles mosquitoes, boiled
with fever, and he had shrunk to a mere ghost of his
former self. Though the nearest missionary doctor
lived in Lakon Lampang, and the cart road leading
there was impassable through mud, Blise did not
lose her head. She sweated him in blankets, dosed
him with quinine and aspirin, bound his sores in
/bandages smeared with camphor and carbolic.
When he was cured, out he went again to his work.

On another occasion he accidentally stumbled
upon'a hornets’ nest. Knowing the danger, he fled
for his life away from these terrible red-and-yellow
striped deaths, but none the less he received four
nasty stings. His neck and fa'ce swelled almost
out of recognition, and the poison awakened the
fever in his bones. Back to Elise he came for more
nursing; then out to the forest once more.

The rains ceased. The streams sank, and the
forest, from being a sinister dripping wilderness,
became a cool ca&dral of greenery. Elise was now
able to accompany her husband on some of his trips.

The mornings grew cold and a mist hung upon
ihe earth. Followed by their baggage elephants
%nd coolies, they would steal quietly along the silent
jungle mazes. Soon the sun would pierce the mists
and set the dew glistening like drops of gold on the

70 POO LORN OF THE ELEPHANTS

quivering leaves. Arrived at the top of a hill, they
would pause to admire the view. Beneath them
rolls the landscape, but not a patch of land is visi-
ble. The ground lies hidden underneath a swelling
green mantle of innumerable trees.

Sometimes, in their quest for likely spots where
teak might be found, they would camp beneath the
shadow of a huge wall of rock. To the right of the
little tent towers the wall, huge and forbidding, to
the left the primeval forest. Hundreds of monkeys
chatter, whoop, spring from crag to crag, scream-
ing their indignation at the arrival of strangers. A
jungle-cock, all scarlet and gold, crows and scuttles
into the undergrowth. A sambhur bells. Long
red squirrels run along the spreading branches.
Birds flutter, cry, and seek their nests.

Night falls, swift and threatening. Logs are
dragged by the coolies into the centre of the clear-
ing, and soon a huge fire blazes merrily. Chairs
and tables are brought out of the tent and placed
round the fire. The cold wind rises, roars through
the tree-tops, whines and drones round the harsh
rock walls. The fire sparkles, hisses, dies. The
humans return to their tents. A barking-deer
shatters the night with hoarse bellow. A tiger,
alert and terrible, sends out his low moaning call,
and horror stalks through the gloom.

A fine season, this cold weather; but all good
• things come to an end, and soon the hot months
arrived with furnace breath. Leaves fell from the
trees and covered the earth with a crackling mantle.
The crickets shrilled like saws, and water became
scarce. The elephants were sent to resfe-camps,
and, the slackest period of the year ensued.

It was then that Eichard Cairns received his call
for help. The message came in the shape of a

72 POO LORN OF THE ELEPHANTS

perspiring coolie, who brought news that a young
teak-wallah in charge of a distant forest was seri-
ously ill with dysentery and unable to move.
Cairns prepared for an immediate forced march.
His master’s bungalow, so said the coolie, lay
nearly a hundred miles due north of Ban Tern,
over wild mountainous country where even riding
would be impossible. Cairns therefore got toge-
ther six of the fastest of his own coolies and, after
promising them an extra reward if they hurried,
set out from Ban Tern with the messenger as a
guide. Elise wished to accompany him, but he
refused to allow her to leave the compound. The
journey under the fierce rays of the sun would
prove a fearful undertaking, and Elise now had a
tiny budding life to consider.

Cairns completed that journey in four days, an'^
almost superhuman accomplishment, but he arrived '
one day too late. As he neared the little bamboo
dwelling built in the heart of the forest, an ominous
calm prevailed. No mahouts, no servants, no
coolies were to be seen in the vicinity, and Cairns
whitened under his tan, for he knew well that the
natives, fearing either devils or unmerited blame,
jilways flee from the scene of a white man’s death.

Cairns mounted the rickety ladder, and a small
flog, half pariah, half fox-terrier, snarled warning
from above. He strode past it and approached the
bed. A flutter of white on a small table at the
head of the bed caught his attention. He bent and
read the painfully written words :

To whoever may come. Look after my dog.

Though Cairns had not known the young man,
his face was working when he buried him in a

A GREAT ADVENTURE IS PLANNED 73

lonely forest grave. Then, accompanied by the
little dog, he started back for Ban Tern,

Cairns took the return journey in more leisurely
fashion, for his coolies were dead lame and he him-
self was badly exhausted. When half-way back he
camped one afternoon somewhat earlier than usual,,
as he had struck a dense patch of jungle whose
foliage gave grateful shade. Tea was brought to
him in his tent, but after he had drunk it a vague
depression settled upon him. He had seen one of
his own race left to die alone in the forest, and now
ghastly thoughts crowded in upon him. He pic-
tured Elise falling ill while he was absent on some
jungle trip; he saw her, fearful lest she should
cause him needless anxiety, sending him no news,
but gradually wasting away in the deserted bunga-
low, he saw a white face, perfect as marble. For
the first time the fear of the jungle had entered
Eichard Cairns’s soul.

He picked up an old newspaper and endeavoured
to concentrate on its pages, but, try as he might,
he could not shake off those visions. Eventually,
tired though he was, he reached for his shot-and-
ball gun. The light still held, and he would go for
a short stroll on the offchance of a shot at a wild
pig or green pigeon. Morbid fancies are apt to be
bad for a lonely man, and he realised only too well
the necessity for some immediate occupation.

In case the little dog should startle the game, he
signalled for it to remain behind, then left the tent.
He passed the coolies’ small shelters, in which the
men were cooking their rice, and entered the forest.

He had not made more than half a mile from
camp when suddenly he came upon an elephant.
It was standing with its back towards him, and
had evidently not sensed his approach, for his feet
were clad in rope-soled shoes that made no sound,*

74 POO LORN OF THE ELEPHANTS
and what little wind there was blew directly in his
face.

Cairns halted and stifled an exclamation of sur-
prise. On either side of the elephant’s broad stern
could be seen the faint brand marks of the teak
company, and these, together with the huge size
of the animal, told him that by sheer accident he
had come across Poo Lorn the Terrible.

For a full minute Cairns gazed at the unsuspect-
mg elephant. Then, turning, he crept silently
back to camp. Morbid fancies no longer tortured
his brain : a great adventure called.

Three days later Richard Cairns marched into
the compound at Ban Tern. Elise, on the look-out
for him, walked slowly down the bungalow steps to
meet him. She^saw no stretcher beside him, only
a little dog, and she knew that his long journey
had been in vain.

'‘Too late,” he said soberly. “This is his dog.
He left a note asking for it to be looked after.”

Elise bent and stroked the terrier’s head, for she
knew the love a lonely man has for his dog.

“Old chap,” she whispered, “we’ll make you
Just as happy as we can.”

Strangely enough, Cairns mentioned nothing to
his wife of the meeting with Poo Lorn till nearly
a week had elapsed, though his thoughts centred
continually round the great animal. To recapture
Poo Lorn would be a feather in his cap and would
bring him into the good books of his superiors in
London and Bangkok. Moreover, this year there
were a number of unusually heavy logs to be drag-
ged into the jungle streams, and for this work Poo
Lorn would prove invaluable. Yet what would
, Elise say when he told her of his plans?

A GREAT ADVENTURE IS PLANNED 75

One evening after dinner Cairns broached the
subject.

“By the way, I saw Poo Lorn the other day,*'
he said ofi-handedly.

“Poo Lorn? Where?”

Briefly he told her the circumstances, and she
glanced at him in puzzled fashion.

“But why have you only just told me, Dick?”
she asked.

Cairns threw his cigarette away. He would waste
no time in needless argument.

“I’ve been thinking over things, and now I’ve
decided. Elise, I’m going to have one more shot
at capturing Poo Lorn.”

“Have you thought what may happen if vou
fail?”

“If I fail he’ll remain free, I suppose.”

“Yes, he will. And he’ll come to the compound
and give us a far worse lesson than the one he gave
us before. Why, it’s sheer madness even to think
of going after him again.

“I’ve got my heavy rifle,” said her husband
grimly. “If he pays us another visit he’ll find
himself up against something far worse than a
shot-gun or a bamboo spear. But he won’t have a
chance of attacking the compound again, Elise.
I’ll capture him before he does any damage. I
swear I will.”

Elise bit her lip. Both she and Eichard had
recently gone through a considerable mental strain
and were a trifle on edge.

“I thought you knew something about elephants,
Dick!” she flashed at him suddenly.

For answer Cairns rose abruptly and stalked out
of the bungalow. The taunt had stung him to the
quick and sent hot words rising to his lips. He held

76 POO LORN OP THE ELEPHANTS

them in check, however, and walked twice round
the compound, with his head in the air. Then he
returned to his wife.

“Forgive me,” he whispered. “I was a cad.
1*11 forget all about Poo Lorn. On my word of
honour I will.”

Womanlike, now that her point was scored, she
relented.

“Listen,” she said: “you may have just one
try if you promise to be good.”

He stared at her in amazement.

“I’ll get straight down to business to-morrow,”
■said he.

She smiled at his eagerness; but there were con-
ditions to be made. No cruel methods such as
pitfalls were to be used. Dick was, wherever pos-
sible, to direct operations from a safe distance and
run no risk of a personal encounter with Poo Lorn.
Cairns readily agreed.

There was no sleep for the man that night. A
golden opportunity had come; the forest work was
at its slackest, and consequently all the company
elephants could be brought out for the chase. Poo
Lorn would almost certainly be captured, and then
what would follow? Cairns saw himself taming
Poo Lorn’s fierce soul through sheer attention and
kindness. He saw the great elephant doing much
valuable work for the company; he saw it of an
evening coming into the compound, the envy and
admiration of all; he saw it taking tamarind from
tiny hands; he saw strange and wonderful visions
all that night.

The sun rose, fierce and hard. The compound
leapt into life. Headmen, forest trackers, mahouts
:and coolies buzzed with activity. Gossip flew round
the little village. Soon the talk reached the ears
i)f Check Lee, the evil Chinaman, back again in

THE MIGHT OE POO LORN 77

his reconstructed house after some secret trip over
the border.

“Sang Noo,” said the Chinaman to his secre-
tary, “I have heard that the elephant Poo Lorn has
been located, and that the young v^hite man plans
a drive. That is true?”

“Great One, it is true.”

“Then see that some of my men, unknown to
the white man, follow at a distance. And what-
ever the result of the chase, let it be reported to
me at once.”

CHAPTER XII

THE MIGHT OP POO LORN

Poo Lorn the Terrible, alone as ever, was stand-
ing in the thickest part of the forest, where dark
evergreen trees shaded him completely. Though
he had attained his full height at the age of twenty-
seven, since then he had gro’^m more and more
mature with every passing season. His great
body had thickened, his strength became even more
gigantic than when he had escaped from man, and
by now he had reached his thirty-first year and was
thus in the full bloom of his health and power.
He stood ten feet four inches at the shoulder; his
weight was over five tons; each of his giant feet
measured sixty-one inches in circumference; his
long curved tusks were peerless in their grace. In
the whole of the vast jungle ranges stretching from
India through Burma to Siam there was no ele-
phant mightier than he.

' On the whole he had led a peaceful easy-going

TOO LORN OF THE ELEPHANTS

existence, for since his raid on the compound at
Ban Tern he had been left completely undisturbed
by man. There were the jungle people, of course,
queer stunted little beings who sometimes passed
near him as he grazed; but these he knew were
very different from the natives who dwelt in vil-
lages, and accordingly he made no effort to pursue
them.

These jungle people were mostly nomads. They
built precarious huts, then left them for others, and
at all times they lived in great fear of elephants.
Poo Lorn in particular they revered; they soon
made a god of him. As time went on and he
showed no inclination to savage them, they became-
bold enough to approach him with offerings of
choice jungle fruit. He suffered them to do this,,
as he liked fruit, and thus the seasons w^ent by in
quiet restful freedom.

Every now and then, howwer, that strange de-
sire for the north would return, and he would make
the long journey there and back again. Every
living creature of the forest gave him a wide berth,
though once a rogue wild elephant had attacked
him. The rogue was a large powerful beast, made
doubly strong by solitary brooding that had well-
nigh reached the point of madness. Its little pig-
eyes glowed wickedly as with a hoarse bellow it
surged forward upon Poo Lorn.

But from the very start the brute never had a
chance; it was never given a real opportunity of
showing its mettle, since Poo Lorn simply smashed
it. With one mighty thrust of the head he sent
the animal sprawling; five minutes later it had
ceased to resemble an elephant at all. Poo Lorn,
scarcely wounded, passed on.

But now his freedom was to be disturbed at last,
for he sensed that men and tame elephants were*

THE MIGHT OP POO LORN 79

approaching. After all these j^ears they were pur-
suing him again. Let them come. He disdained
-even to move as yet. He waited, listening intently.

Presently he saw that a cordon of elephants,
mounted by mahouts and men carrying ropes, had
•completely surrounded him. His method of dealing
with this situation was simple and direct. He
•charged straight at the cordon, knocked over the
-elephant that happened to be in his way, and
•escaped.

Slackening his pace, he moved on for a mile or
•two; but he had not reckoned with the plans of
young Eichard Cairns. Fully aware of Poo Lorn’s
■terrific strength, he had arranged for constant re-
lays of fresh men and elephants to harry him for
hour after hour to the point of exhaustion.

Soon Poo Lorn heard the mob approaching him
•again. This time, however, they made no attempt
to surround him. They merely kept him on the
move by driving him forward until, enraged, he
turned and charged the line. The line scattered
.and allowed him to pass through, then closed,
turned and followed him up once more. This
went on till night had fallen, and at last Poo liorn
was left in peace.

He rested for an hour, then burst into the clear-
ing where he knew the humans were camped. But
€airns had laid his plans well, and all Poo Lorn
found was an empty space of sward. The mahouts
.and coolies were perched in the safety of machans
built high up in the surrounding trees, and Poo
Lorn, after wallowing about in fruitless fashion,
plunged into the forest. Here he passed some of
the tame hobbled elephants, but with that queer
wild courtesy of his he made no attempt to gore
them.

At dawn the next day a fresh lot of elephants

8U POO LORN OF THE ELEPHANTS

appeared on the scene, and the driving of Poo
Lorn began anew. The sun climbed up the brassy
heavens, the jungle simmered with heat, and by
the time the shadows were lengthening Cairns came
to the conclusion that Poo Lorn was rapidly tiring.
He therefore gave orders for a cordon to be formed
and for the men to hold their ropes in readiness.
Soon Poo Lorn was completely surrounded.

Undaunted, he charged and overthrew the ele-
phant he singled out for attack; but several ropes
found their mark. Curling round tusks and legs,
they aroused him to double fury, and his weariness
vanished as if by magic. Bellowing and trumpet-
ing, he plunged forward, dragging behind him at
least three elephants. These promptly lost their
heads, bellowed, squalled, strove vainly to pit their
strength against his, then fell over on to their backs.

Indescribable confusion followed. Frantic with
fear, mahouts and ropemen flung themselves off
their charges and ran; and it was only by prompt
action on the part of Eichard Cairns that tragedy
was averted. Jumping from the elephant he rode,
he seized a knife from a passing coolie and with it
cut the ropes that bound Poo Lorn to the others.
Poo Lorn, raving and trumpeting, shuffled on a
few yards and then, plunging and kicking, freed
himself from the loosened coils that clung to legs
and trunk.

Night fell. Poo Lorn was too weary to seek out
his tormentors. He spent the hours of darkness in
alternate grazing and sleeping. At dawn the cries
of humans were wafted through the thin air. They
were still on his trail, and, though his proud spirit
was yet unconquered, he knew that for ihe present
he must abandon all thoughts of resistance. He
must seek refuge in flight.

Now he knew of the proximity of a' deep swirling

THE MIGHT OF POO LORN 81

river, with countless waterfalls and rapids, that
still ran fast and strong in spite of the hot dry
weather. He had crossed this river before on some
of his rambles, and to it he made with all the speed
of which he was capable. He arrived at the river
bank and was preparing for the plunge, when the
crackling of bushes sounded behind him and he
whirled. A tall rangy elephant, with legs that
enabled it to get well ahead of its companions, burst
out of the fringe of jungle and was right upon his
heels.

Poo Lorn was tired out and the river had yet to
be crossed, and he therefore resolved to take to the
water at once. But suddenly the mahout caught
his eye — none other than Ai Kharn.

Weary though he was, Poo Lorn charged. As
usual, the rangy elephant was knocked clean off
its feet and rolled bellowing on the ground. Ai
Kharn and the three men he had with him for
roping were thrown clear, and all four rushed for
the safety of the nearest tree, up which they skim-
med like monkeys. Poo Lorn, arriving at the foot
of their refuge a moment too late, had to be content-^
with pounding and thrusting at the base. The tree,
however, was a huge forest giant and beyond the
strength of any elephant to bring down, so he soon
gave up the attempt. Hearing sounds of further
pursuers, he turned round and entered the cool
river.

Seven more tame animals, including Eiichard
Cairns's own, burst out on to the bank in time to
see Poo Lorn's giant form surging across the bub-
bling stream. Their riders saw the whirling eddies,
heard the deep rumble of the waterfalls; and they
knew that only one elephant alive could cross the
terrible expanse of hidden snags and deathtraps.

As before they had wished for his capture, so

^'2 POO LORN OF THE ELEPHANTS

now they wished only for him to live, and their
iiearts were in their months as they saw him battle
against the fearful odds. Every few minutes he
w'oiild disappear completely, save for the tip of
his trunk; then up he w^ould come again. For a
full half-hour he fought with every ounce of his
last remaining strength, and when he finally gained
the safety of the opposite bank an involuntary sigh
of relief w-ent round the spectators.

“Of a truth,” said one of the mahouts, “Poo
Lorn has earned his freedom.”

The others echoed approval and Cairns was with
them. Poo Lorn had fought a gallant and magni-
ficent struggle, and his heart went out to his
adversary.

Cairns raised one hand. His eyes were shining
and his normal calm had deserted him.

^ “Up!” he cried, and at the command every

mahout lifted his goad.

“Come, my lords, your salute to a king among
elephants.”

j Down came the goads and a great roaring trum-
^pet blared and bellowed over the gleaming breast
^of the river. Poo Lom's reply, low and sullen,
echoed back, then his huge bulk swayed into the
wall of forest that bordered the farther bank.

Three days later, Cairns told Elise the whole
story. Several of his best tuskers were lamed, his
men were exhausted, much company money had
been expended, yet still Poo Lorn roamed free as
air.

“And honestly, Elise, I’m glad that he does,”
he concluded, “He beat me every time at my owm
game, and now I’ll leave him alone for the rest of
my days,”

Ijeaving the bungalow, he crossed over to the

THE MIGHT OF POO LORN 83 *

company office, where he found his mahouts and
coolies awaiting the extra pay promised them as a
reward for their exertions. He handed them each
the sum of ten ticals in Siamese Treasury notes.
The last to come before him was Ai Kharn.

“Lord,” he said, “I desire a reward above the
others, for was I not the first to reach Poo I-orn
when he stood on the river bank?”

Cairns considered the remark, then handed him
five more ticals; but the sum did not appear to*
satisfy him.

“I also desire a rise of ten ticals a month in my
wages,” he said in easy tones. This new white
lord was young and inexperienced, and the mahout
was going to take full advantage of the fact.

“Thou talkest monkey’s talk,” answered Cairns
after a pause. “No mahout on earth receives such
wages.”

“Lord,” said he, “I ask for this sum because
there is no other mahout like me on earth.”

Cairns glanced at the villainous features of the
native and read the vanity marked therein. “Thou
hast a swollen head, Ai Kharn,” he told the man.

“It is the master who has one,” answered the
other surlily.

Now if there is one thing that no white man
can allow the natives to do, it is to let them ans-
wer back in insolent fashion. The white man in
the depths of the wilderness lives by prestige, and
prestige alone. Once that has gone, honour,
security, even life itself is at stake, and conse-
quently Cairns reddened in anger. He longed to>
strike the man to the ground, but with an effort
he refrained. The mahout, though tough and wiry,
was far weaker than he, and there was a better-
way of humbling him than the use of violence.

84 POO LORN OF THE ELEPHANTS

“Ai Kharn, thou art dismissed my service for
ever/’ he said icily.

The full significance of the remark seemed lost
on Ai Kharn for a while, but as the horrible truth
dawned on him, he swung on his heel and walked
out of the compound. He passed through the
village and reached the forest, where he sat on his
hams beneath a shady tree.

He, once a great mahout, even at one time the
rider of Poo Lorn himself, was now a man without
a job and of no more importance than the lowliest
pariah-dog that ever snified round a garbage heap.
And this had come about directly through the in-
justice of the Lord Cairns.

The Lord Cairns. Ai Kharn thought long of the
white man, and a great desire for vengeance had
enveloped him. But that must wait. Work of
some sort must be found at once.

He remembered Check Lee. Ai Kharn waited
till nightfall, then pattered back to the village,
bound for the Chinaman’s teak house.

CHAPTER xm

THE AGONY OP POO LORN

Check Lee sat in his house, and a grim smile
curved his thin lips. Only that morning his run-
ners had told him of Poo Lorn’s escape towards the
Indo-China border.

Check Lee pondered.

To recover after his terrific exertions, the ele-
phant would remain for several days on the farther
side of the river, He must strike before the animal
regained his strength.

He would trap Poo Lorn in cruel fashion, break
his proud spirit, alter Ms brand, and take him over

THE AGONY OF POO LORN 85

the border to join his force of stolen elephants. The
risk was comparatively small.

Now for the choosing of a skilled and fearless
mahout. For the moment Check Lee could think
of no man suitable for the task. Imagine his sur-
prise, therefore, when soon after dark Sang Noo
led in Ai Kharn.

‘‘Great One, I desire an elephant to ride in your
service,” said Ai Kharn in respectful tones.

“But is not Ai Kharn in the pay of the great
white company?”

“Great One, I am tired of the white company.
This very morning I told the Lord Cairns so.”

“That is probably a lie,” said Check Lee
blandly.

“Great One, it is the truth.”

“Ai Kharn, thou art a knave and a liar. All the
same, I have in mind an elephant for thee.”

“The Great One is good to his servant,” mut-
tered Ai Kharn gratefully. “And my wages, 0
Lord and Master?”

“Eighteen ticals a month.”

The mahout flushed with pleasure.

“Master, I agree to the wages,” said he.

“That is good. The elephant is Poo Lorn.”

Ai Kharn goggled. He continued to goggle while
Check Lee briefly outlined his plans; but when the
latter had finished speaking, the mahout had re-
covered his nerve. Poo Lorn would be utterly sub-
dued by the terrible punishment he was about to
receive, and he would then be in a position to bully
the animal as much as he liked.

“Great One, I take the job,” said he.

“Then all is arranged. And now, as I have told
thee, we leave an hour before dawn.”

Punctually at the hour mentioned, a strange little
party stole out of the village in the cool dark that

86 POO LORN OF THE ELEPHANTS

precedes the dawn. The Chinaman and his secre-
tary, mounted on Siamese ponies, went first. Then
came Ah Pong, the cook, followed by Ai Kharn
and four trusted runners. Besting in the wnrst
heat of the day and sleeping at night in roughly
made leaf shelters, they travelled for sixty hours,
and then reached the river. Selecting a point some
ten miles below the scene of the elephant’s escape,
they built rafts of bamboo and poled to the oppo-
site bank. Near a small jungle village they made a
temporary camp. Operations then began in earn-
est.

Firstly, Ai Eharn and the four runners w^ent out
to locate Poo Lorn. Careful as they were to avoid
startling him, he winded them and gave chase over
a short distance, but their legs were fleet and they
soon shook him off. They hastened back with the
news, whereupon Check Lee summoned the head-
man of the village. After much bargaining twenty
men set out accompanied by the Chinaman’s party.
A large natural clearing was chosen a good mile
from where Poo Lorn had been seen, and in this
clearing a fifteen-foot pit was dug and covered with
a cunning layer of bamboo fronds and leaves.
Alongside they dug a smaller pit, which they left
unconcealed. Then, bribed heavily by the China-
man for the price of their silence, the villagers went
back to their homes.

Check Lee shifted his camp to where the pits
had been dug, and a series of skilful and daring
operations was begun. Ai Kharn and the four
runners, having located Poo Lorn again, took care-
ful note of every wild animal path and the situation
of every scalable tree in the vicinity, after which
they approached the elephant and deliberately
caused him to charge them. With him swinging
along behind, they would dash down one of the

Poo Lorn crashed into the trap prepared for him.

88 POO LORN OF THE ELEPHANTS

paths, always leading him in the direction of the
clearing. Should he gain too rapidly on them, they
would skim up trees. While Poo Lorn raged round
one of the refuges, the four men perched up the
other trees wwld run on a few’’ hundred yards.

This w^as repeated time and again, though on
one occasion a runner was a fraction of a second
late and the tip of Poo Lorn’s trunk caught him.
He paid the penalty with his life, but the others^
urged on by promises of e^tra rew^ards, remained
undaunted, and after two days’ terrific energy the
final scene opened.

Check Lee and his secretary and cook, perched
in a machan in the fork of a huge tree, saw the
four men rush into the clearing, with Poo Lorn
close upon their heels. The men crossed the nar-
row space between the two pits, and Poo Lorn,
swerving sharply to one side in order to avoid the
open pit, promptly crashed into the trap prepared
for him. The onlookers held their breath. Could
they believe their eyes? Was Poo Lorn the Terrible
really captured at last?

Eeassured by the sound of muffled trumpeting,
the three climbed down from the machan and
peered down into the depths of the pit. Poo Lorn
had not been killed by the fall, as often happens in
such cases. He was very much alive, though he
could move but little. Check Lee, as he gazed at
his victim, smiled his evil smile; Ah Pong sucked
his teeth; the men sang and danced in triumph;
but Sang Noo, mindful of the fearful bellows com-
ing from the pit, heartily wished himself back in
the teak-house at Ban Tern. i

Once Poo Lorn was completely in their power,
the natural cruelty of the native came out. They
hurled down stones upon Poo Lorn, prodded him

THE AGONY OF POO LORN 89

with pointed bamboo spears, flung blazing torches
on to him, tormented him with fiendish skill.
Never a drop of water nor a bale of fodder did they
lower to him.

At first Poo Lorn strove mightily with his giant
body. He tried with his tusks to dig away some of
the earth, but his prison w^as too narrow. Also,
every movement he made gave him red-hot agony
in one of his hind legs, since a large tendon had
been severely wrenched by the fall. He therefore
soon abandoned all attempts at freeing himself, and
merely bellowed with wrath.

After three days and nights of torment Poo Lorn
was very weak. He lolled against the sides of the
pit; his breath came in hoarse gasps, and he no
longer bellowed. But his brain was still capable of
thought; he had discovered that when he ceased
showing his anger, so did tlie men above him cease
their persecution. He now remained quiet and
awaited events.

The Chinaman saw a helpless animal with its
spirit completely broken. Accordingly he gave his
men sharp orders and they set to work. They
lowered water and fodder, which Poo Lorn ac-
cepted. Once, many years ago, he had refused
food because he had not wished to surrender to
man. Now he had grown cunning. The humans
were strong while he was weak. He must eat and
drink, regain his former health, then slay his hated
enemies and escape.

While he chewed the fodder the men were busy
widening the pit. After several hours’ labour the
sides of the trap sloped sufficiently for Poo Lorn
to stagger out. As he stood on level ground once
more, his appearance was pitiful. His massive
body had grown so thin that the bones shone
through the skin; his gait was feeble; his eyes were

fill POO LORN OF THE ELEPHANTS

glazed: his skin was torn and loleeding from a
hundred different wounds; his injured leg still gave
him agony. It was only through his immense
strength that he had come out of the ordeal alive.

Ai Kharn, the mahout, approached him, wdiile
the others stood by with spears. Ai Kharn shrieked
a command and dealt Poo Lorn a heavy blow on
the forehead with a spiked iron goad. The blood
spurted from the wound, ran down between the eyes
and over the trunk, but never a sound did Poo
Lorn make. He knelt obediently. The time
would come later for his terrible revenge.

Ai Kharn mounted, but he had not ridden the
elephant more than a few yards when Check Lee
noticed a limp in the left hind leg. An inspection
was made of the injury, and Ai Kharn dismounted
to view it.

‘‘The hurt. Is it bad?” inquired Check Lee.

‘‘I think it take many moons before Poo Lorn
is right again,” answered the mahout, who under-
stood elephants. ‘‘That tendon, it need much rest
before Poo Lorn can do hard w^ork.”

The Chinaman swore violently, for he had in
mind the capture of a huge herd of wild elephants
on the other side of the border. The presence of
such a huge tusker as Poo Lorn would be simply
invaluable in taming the fiercer members of the
herd, still — curses would not cure Poo Lorn. The
elephant must be rested until the leg had healed of
its own accord, but first he must get Poo Lorn
over the border. Check Lee therefore gave Poo
Lorn two days’ rest. Then, regardless of his acute
agony, he marched him over the border.

They canae to Check Lee’s camp, set in the wilds
of Indo-jQhina, where there were ex-dacoits, mur-
derers, fierce swarthy men who would stop at
nothing.

POO LORN TURNS ROGUE 91

Poo Lorn, reeling with pain and weakness, was
forced to kneel and receive tlie brand of Check Lee.
The brands of the old teak company, made with
a painless acid paste, still showed faintly on either
hind-quarter. Over these Check Lee’s great marks
were printed, not by the merciful white man’s me-
thod, but with white-hot iron.

The branding over, hobbles were put on Poo
Lorn’s forefeet and he was left to graze.

He was captured again by man, and by evil men
to boot. He was thin, lame, and the strength had
gone out of him; but one day it would return and a
fearful vengeance would be hi^

i

CHAPTiR Xiy,,

j U. ... D

POO LOPN TT^EMTTOTT^ — “

For ten months Poo Lorn remained grazing near
the camp of the thieves, and gradually the flush of
his old power stole through his frame and his in-
jured tendon healed. Check Lee had given Ai Kharn
strict orders not to work Poo Lorn, but only to
mount him every day and ride him for an hour or
two to keep him accustomed to the hand of man.
Ai Kharn obeyed, but he took a delight in bullying
and ill-treating his charge on every possible occa-
sion. He used goad, dagger, bamboo splinters,
even hot irons, in his effort to curb Poo Lorn’s
proud spirit, and never once did Poo Lorn try to
resist. When the time was ripe the man would
pay, but for the present Poo Lorn was content to
wait.

Check Lee himself remained in the camp, for

92 POO LORN OF THE ELEPHANTS

he wished to keep in touch wdth the wild herd’s
movements. When Poo Lorn’s leg was better, he
sent out runners to begin roanding up the animals.
This was difficult w^ork, and it was only after two-
months that they succeeded in driving the herd
towards the sources of a dry creek that ran from
the distant hills towards the camp.

It had steep and unscalable banks, and under the
Chinaman’s direction a stout bamboo barrier, with
points jutting inwards, was built across where the
banks were steepest. Fifty yards farther up, round
a bend, another fence was prepared. This was
similar to the first, except that a twenty-foot open-
ing was left in it. Above it hung a strong gate
of thick timber studded with nails. This was
slung to a cross beam, and could be dropped by cut-
ting a rope tied to a neighbouring tree, in which
Check Lee then took up his position.

A period of anxious waiting ensued. At last the
herd, harried by a crowd of beaters with tom-toms
and flares, came blundering down the creek. The
elephants streamed through the opening, and the
rope was cut. The elephants, rounding the bend,
quickly . came upon the second barrier, and thus
found themselves trapped on all sides.

Poo Lorn, hobbled in the jungle a mile away,
heard their trumpetings, and strange feelings stirred
within him. The day after the capture, Ai Kharn
and two coolies carrying ropes, stole up to him.
They slipped off his hobbles, climbed his sides and
rode him in the direction of the stockade.

Soon twelve other tame tuskers, all similarly
mounted, swung into position behind Poo Lorn.
At the closed gate they halted.

Inside the stockade the bewildered herd was
marching up and down, vainly trying to discover
some means of .escape. Outside were crowds of

POO LORN TURNS ROGUE 93

men-animals, all jabbering excitedly. The herd
was a magnificent one, of twenty bulls, twice that
number of cows and a fair sprinkling of calves; and
with the arrival of the tame elephants great fun
was to be expected.

Check Lee’s instructions had been clear. The
gate was to be raised and the tame tuskers were to
enter and subdue the more troublesome members
of the herd. This done, the men with ropes were
to slip off the backs of their charges and noose the
hind legs of the nearest. The noosed animal would
then be pushed and prodded out of the enclosure
and secured to a tree until it was thoroughly sub-
dued. Thus had spoken Check Lee, and now, from
the safety of a tall tree on which he was perched, he
clapped his hands and signalled for the gate to be
opened.

The fun began, though not quite in the manner
expected by the humans. Owing to his size, Poo
Lorn was the first to pass. Once inside, he knew
his moment had come. He *‘swaid,’* and Ai
Kharn was taken completely unawares. He and
the two men with him fell sprawling on to the
ground. Poo Lorn turned to savage them, but a
wild tusker attacked him in the rear, and by the
time he had brushed oft* his assailant the men had
made good their escape.

Poo Lorn charged at the exit, but with a crash
the gate snapped down into position, and he found
himself trapped with the herd. Nothing daunted,
he lunged at the gate. The iron nails hurt his.
trunk cruelly, and he drew back with a bellow.
A stout post free of nails struck his attention, and
he made for it. Though far beyond the strength
of any normal elephant to uproot, it cracked and
fell. With it the cross-beam gate collapsed.

Freedom now beckoned. Poo Lorn was in the

14 POO LOEN OF THE ELEPHANTS

^ct of rushing through the exit when another tusker
attacked him from behind, whereupon Poo Lorn
went completely mad. Sheer anger blinded him,
and instead of charging the humans outside, he
turned and went roaring and bellowing through the
flustered herd. Terrified, they gave way on either
side of him. He reached the hidden fence round
the corner. It bristled with spears, and he swaing
round again. A panic-stricken young tusker
jabbed at him with its tusks, and Poo Lorn drove
it before him.

Pandemonium broke out in the arena. Trumpet-
ings, squealings, the stamping of great feet and
jostling of huge bodies mingled in one gigantic
storm of sound, while outside the upper end of the
stockade an almost equal confusion prevailed.
Mahouts, coolies and chainmen shrieked with
alarm and sought trees. But many of them were
too late to reach a position of safety. The herd,
urged on by Poo Lorn, saw the opening in the fence
ahead and surged through it. Check Lee’s tame
tuskers, sensing their danger, shook off their rider§
and fled up the creek. Mahouts and ropemen, as
well as several coolies, were caught by the living
torrent and trampled to death. Then, headed by
the tame elephants and followed by Poo Lorn, the
herd went roaring up the dry river bed for mile
upon mile.

When the banks flattened, the herd spread itself
-out in the jungle. They squealed, rapped, and
finally resumed their interrupted grazing. Check
Lee’s twelve tuskers flapped enormous ears of relief
and settled down comfortably to their newly found
freedom. As for Poo Lorn, when the madness left
him he made his way back along the creek. There
were several more little matters to be attended to
before he took a well-earned rest.

POO LORN TUENSROGUB 95

But Ai Kharn and the Chinaman had been too
quick for him. As soon as the herd had disap-
peared, the mahout had shrieked warning from the
tree he had scaled. Poo Lorn would return and
seek vengeance, he cried.

The survivors thereupon fled to the nearest river,
where they set hastily about building bamboo rafts.
As the Chinaman supervised the work his face w'as
mottled with rage, had spent cotmtless money;
he had lost not only the herd itself, but his twelve
best tuskers into the bargain; many of his followers
had been injured or killed outright, and his forest
camp had ceased to exist. Check Lee spat viciously
and vowed to leave elephants alone in the future.
He would find his way back to Ban Tern and bleed
the simple native villagers : this, at any rate, gave
a reasonable profit at no risk to life or limb.

As a distant trumpet sounded, the men burst
into feverish activity, for Poo Lorn had evidently
tracked them down. They launched the rafts,
sprang on to them and poled frantically down-
stream, The little fleet rounded a bend as Poo Lorn
broke out of the forest and stood upon the bank.

He glared after them and bellowed with disap-
pointment when they disappeared from view.
Then, since he could not follow, he rolled into the
forest again and began to graze.

The hatred of years smouldered in him as he
tore at the luscious foliage. Was he never to be
left alone, free and unhindered, to enjoy peace?
In his hatred, the dislike of any particular in-
dividual was swallowed up by one huge hatred of
mankind as a whole. No longer would he wait for
humans to come to him; he would seek them out
of his own accord; he would rend and destroy what-
ever human habitations chanced to cross his path :
thus would a fearful revenge be his.

96 POO LOJIN OF THE ELEPHANTS

Poo Lorn moved slowly through the forest. He
had turned rogue at last. In the period known as
the Three Years’ Terror that followed, the fame of
Poo Lorn was to spread to the four corners of the
earth. In places as far apart as London and San
Francisco, Cape Town and Montreal, men were
soon to read of his activities and man^el greatly.
But Poo Lorn knew nothing of telegrams. He knew
only that from now on his one aim in life was to
destroy the work of man. Sullen, magnificent, he
moved forward through the jungle mazes towards
the dwellings of his unsuspecting enemies.

PART in

CHAPTER XT

THE TERROR BEGINS

Poo Lorn recrossed the border and travelled slowly
south-west. He did not know whither his course
would take him, for this part of the country was
new to him. Day after day went by without a
sign of human habitation, but he did not hurrj.

On a rainy morning in July he arrived at the
railway line from Bangkok to Lakon Lampang, a
-distance of some four hundred miles. Eor the first
two hundred miles the line ribboned through flat
paddy-fields, then rose and fell over the forest-clad
hills of Northern Siam.

Prom the depths of this jungle Poo Lorn peered
at the track, which he knew instinctively to be the
work of man. Then an extraordinary thing hap-
pened. An enormous monster, the size of fifty
elephants in one, came shrieking and bellowing
along the line. For the first time in his life Poo
Lorn knew fear and turned and fled. After putting
a good two miles betv/een him and the monster, he
paused and listened. Evidently it had not followed
him, for he could hear its distant rumble far away
to the north. His curiosity now thoroughly
aroused, he returned to the line. Soon another
train passed. He bolted again; but when a third
puffed by he stood his ground, for he had noticed
that these monsters never turned aside to pursue
him. They kept to the man-made path.

9S POO LOPX OF THE ELEPHANTS

By sundown several more had passed his hiding-
place, and Poo Lorn had Jearnt a lot. In some of
them he had seen men seated. His curiosity having
become overwhelming, he burst out from his screen
of leaves and marched boldly along the sleepers.

On rounding a corner he came to a siding vLere
several young monsters reiLosed. He approached
them cautiously. They did not bolt, nor did they
show sign of attacking him. He therefore felt one
gingerly with the tip of his trunk. It was cold, and
an idea dawned on him : men could make dead
things live, and live when they still were dead. At
their behest, stones, sticks, goads, and all manner
of objects moved as if alive.

These young monsters were obviously some siicb
product, and should be destroyed.

Bending his head, he heaved mightily at the
nearest truck. To his surprise it did not fall over
like a house. It ran away from him. Por a
moment Poo Lorn vras rooted to the spot in aston-'
ishment, not knowing that the truck, which Kap^^
pened to be an empty one, stood on the crest -of a
gentle slope. A dead thing had come to life and
fled from him in terror.

When he had recovered fi’om his surprise he saw
that the truck had stopped. The innate spirit of
mischief in the heart of every wild elephant caused
him to shufifle after it. He gave it another push,
with the result that the truck, reaching a steeper
portion of the slope, ran out of the siding on to the
main line and disappeared round a bend.

Boo Lorn made no attempt to pursue it : it ran
too fast for him. Accordingly, he looked round for
any other damage he could do. Several tall posts,
ran parallel to the railww line, hut of what use
they were he could not fathom, since no houses

THE TERROR BEGINS 99

rested upon their tops. Still, they were made by
man and down they would come.

Crack! A telegraph post fell at right angles
across the rails, and Poo Lorn snorted with dis-
may. A thin, sinuous object was wii thing round
him. With his trunk he freed himself from the
wires and then, seeing that no further danger
threatened from them, he made for a second post.
The crash of the fall w^as drowned by another and
mightier crash that came echoing up from down
the line. A moment later a shrieking and hissing
smote Poo Lorn’s ears. Leaving the telegraph
poles, he cut through the jungle to investigate.

Arrived at a point opposite the noise, Poo Lorn
beheld an amazing scene. The young monster he
had recently pushed w'as derailed and a goods train
lay over on its side. The liiss of escaping steam
w^as deafening, and agitated Siamese ran hither and
thither, shouting at the top of their voices.

Suddenly Poo Lorn charged, and the humans,
none of whom had been killed by the accident,
rushed into the wall of forest bordering the opposite
side of the line. Poo Lorn, left alone with the
train, approached the wrecked engine. The monst-
er was still alive, for it snorted and hissed. He
lunged at it and his trunk touched the hot boiler.
He squealed in agony and retreated a few paces.
Then a fresh shrieking and hissing broke out from
somewhere up the line. Leaving the shattered
engine, he moved towards this new sound.

An express, warned in time by a shouting coolie,
had drawn up. Long rows of agitated faces peered
out of the carriage windows. Poo Lorn gazed
earnestly at this strange spectacle. Should he
attack this new monster, which was larger than
any he had seen before, or should he not? He

100 POO LORN OF THE ELEPHANTS
paused, and then from one of the carriages there
emerged a white man.

Now Poo Lorn knew nothing of rifles. He had
been shot at only in the dark, and as he saw the
rifle pointed straight at him, he thought it to be of
no more significance than a goad or a bamboo spear.
He charged the white man. A deafening report
rang out and a thunderbolt hit his forehead. Blood
streamed over eyes and trunk. Dazed, half blind-
ed, Poo Lorn lost all sense of direction, but chance
made him reel sideways into the forest. Through
it he blundered for miles, knocking down trees,
bamboo clumps, everjdhing that came into his
path.

Darkness fell and gradually Poo Lorn returned
to his senses. By raising his head for the charge,
he had deflected the bullet from skull and brain.
It had merely funwed through the thick gristle of
the bump below his forehead and then expended
itself harmlessly in the air. But the wound still
smarted painfully and served as a grim warning
that men with guns were to be left severely alone.

Poo Lorn had learnt several other lessons that
day. Trains, for instance, even when disabled,
should never be attacked. They w^ere capable of
retaliating in an unexpected manner. But empty
trucks and telegraph poles w*ere harmless and could
be destroyed with ease. Also, unless the oppor-
tunity were too good to miss, he must confine his
destroying work to the night hours, as at Ban Tern.
He would therefore harass the railway line only
after sunset.

By the following morning, beyond a slight throb
in the forehead, Poo Lorn was himself again. He
grazed peacefully, till the scent of humans, both
white and brown, came down the wind. They were
tracking him, he knew full well. Now that he had

THE TERROR BEGINS 101

openly declared himself the enemy of every human ^
the latter would not be slow to retaliate.

Poo Lorn brought cunmng to his aid. Instead
of seeking out his foes and charging them, he with-
drew into the thickest part of a huge clump of
bamboos. They snapped back into position, con-
cealing him completely. From this hiding-place
he saw and heard men creeping round the clump.
There were two whites, both armed with rifles, and
a collection of brown coolies. They evidently
guessed at his whereabouts, but could not see him.
No one being inclined to walk into that thick maze,
in which an unseen death might lurk, they with-
drew. Poo Lorn w^aited till night, then emerged
from the clump and swept noiselessly through the
dripping gloom.

At dawn, after a refreshing bath in a jungle
stream, he made for the railway line, which he
reached at a point some ten miles above the scene
of the accident. He had intended to wait till dark,
but the sight of a small station caused him to
change his mind. It consisted of a strip of sandy
platform bordered by a long wooden building. Be-
hind this reposed a tiny native hamlet. An air of
peace hung over the spot and no danger could
threaten.

Poo Lorn’s first object was the stationmaster,
who, clad in khaki uniform and a red-banded hat,
was sucking a twig outside his ofiBce. The line w^as
blocked — no trains were to run that day — and he
had been ordered to stand by and await instruc-
tions. The job suited him. He chewed his twig;
then, suddenly, he sw’allow-ed it and fled for the
village.

The wooden building crashed to earth and Poo
Lorn shuffled straight at the hamlet. The station-
master, followed by the wiiole of the population.

102 POO LORN OF THE ELEPHANTS

fled into the forest, where he lost what remained
of his uniform. Poo Lorn, somewhat tired after
his exertions, made no attempt to chase the fugi-
tives. He seemed, indeed, to prefer destroying
men’s work to killing them. In the end he went
hack to the jungle, where he settled down to graze.

A week passed quietly, though Poo Lorn re-
mained always alert for any possible attack. Sur-
prise aided him against human beings; it also help-
ed them in tracking him down. He therefore made
a practice of making wide detours every few hours
to snuff the breeze from every direction; and, since
an elephant can wind a man up to a distance of
three whole miles, he received ample warning of
hostile approach.

The rainy season, too, aided him greatly. The
jungle was now one dense mass of tangled vegeta-
tion. Long coarse grass, writhing creepers and
bushes of thorns, tumbled and tossed between the
mighty forest trees and gave Poo Lorn a secure
lair that stretched for hundreds of square miles
north, east, south and west. Thus he was able to
graze at leisure until the urge for mischief assailed
him again.

After eight days’ rest he stalked through the
forest, intent on action. By evening he scented
many humans, and this time he waited till long
after dark before making any close investigation.
He came upon a large natural clearing in which
numbers of men were camped. Fires blazed
merrily. Two big tents of the type he had seen
white men use were pitched at one end of the clear-
ing. At the other end rows of dark coolies slept.
And in the middle of the open space a huge pit,
partially concealed by bamboos, had been dug.

Poo Lorn had never forgotten the pit into which
he had fallen, and the sight set him boiling with

THE TERROR BEGINS lOS

rage. He trumpeted shrilly and some guards
posted round the clearing jelled a warning. He
shambled at the large tents, and the white men in-
side, surprised by darkness and with no time to
^^rab their rifles, beat a hurried exit. Poo Lorn
tore tlje tents to ribbons, smashed all they contained
into one hopeless mass, then turned towards the
coolie lines. He trod carefully now for any hidden
snags, and found to his surprise that most of the
men had sought refuge in the pit itself. Thus the
astonishing spectacle was seen of man being trapped
by elephant, not elephant by man.

Poo Lorn could have rained down missiles upon
his enemies after the manner of his earlier tor-
mentors, but this was beyond his intelligence. He
stormed round the edges of the pit, and eventually,
since he could not reach the men below, stalked off
into the jungle and was lost in the gloom.

The whites came out of their hiding-places, fished
about in the ruins, and unearthed a pair of useless-
rifles.

“We’re up against something now, old chap,”
said the taller of the two. He was a forest officer
in the service of the Siamese Government, and he
knew something of elephants.

“Ts this an elephant or a devil?” the railway
official answered him.

“A bit of botli, I should say, I reckon we’re
going to hear some more of him before he finishes-
with us.”

The forest officer was right. In the months that
followed Poo Lorn did untold damage to the rail-
way line. Working only by night, he tore up
sleepers, overturned trucks, and pulled down tele-
graph poles. By December, when the brief period
of cold weather set in, a veritable reign of terror

104 POO LORN OF THE ELEPHANTS

was established up-country. Telegraphic com-
munication between Bangkok and the two great
towns of the north, Kangmai and Lakon Lampang,
was being constantly interrupted. The night ex-
presses could no longer run, and where the journey
from Bangkok to Lakon Lampang could formerly
he completed in less than two days, trains pro-
ceeded with the utmost caution and were lucky if
they reached their destination in a week.

The Kamoo coolies who patrolled the line in
search of landslides and fallen trees threw up their
lonely jobs and bolted. Breakdown gangs, per-
manent-way coolies and bridge repairers deserted
in scores, leaving the ofScials in despair.

The telegraph wires, when they were in working
order, hummed busily. In Bangkok and Lakon
Lampang those who had charge of the smooth run-
ning of the railway tore their hair and spent sleep-
less nights. Forest officers, gendarmes, even de-
tachments of Eoyal Siamese soldiery were sent out
after the elephant. Heavy rifles, arrows, concealed
pits, tame elephants, even poisons smeared on likely
foliage, were employed; but Poo Lorn remained un-
captured. His immense strength and almost
devilish luck and cunning enabled him to elude
every attempt to surround him.

When the hot weather arrived, Poo Lorn quitted
the country and made for his secret destination far
away in the north. The Siam jungle, burnt bare
by the fiery sun, was now too open to conceal him,
and he knew that if he remained near the railway
his days of life and liberty were numbered. The
long journey completed, he grazed in his mysterious
haunts during the whole of the dry season. Down
in Siam trains resumed their normal services and
men congratulated one another that the elephant

A CONFERENCE IS HELD 105

had either been killed or had ceased his activities
for good and all.

Certain authorities thought otherwise, however;
and thus, one hot morning in April, Richard Cairns
received an urgent summons to attend a conference
in Lakon Lampang.

CHAPTER XVI

A CONFERENCE IS HELD

Richard Cairns had been a worried man these
past few months. For he and Elise both felt sure
that the rogue must be none other than Poo Lorn.

Elise was anxious because of little Elise, now
aged twenty months. Though Poo Lorn’s opera-
tions had taken place far away from Ban Tern,
she was afraid.

Her husband was worried for a different reason.
He did not believe that Poo Lorn would visit Ban
Tern again, but he did believe that it was through
him that the elephant had turned rogue. By his
long chase he had caused the country much suffer-
ing. In vain Elise had pointed out that over a
year had elapsed before Poo Lorn had begun harry-
ing the railway line. Cairns considered himself
guilty of a crime against both man and beast, and
he had reported his suspicion that the elephant
might be Poo Lorn. Now, as he read the sum-
mons, he guessed that the authorities wished him
to take an active part in the work of bringing Poo
Lorn to bay; and he would be bound to help them.

*‘Dick,” Elise said, **you haven’t forgotten your
promise to me, have you?”

”But you wouldn’t keep me to that promise

106 POO LORN OF THE ELEPHANTS
now?” he cried. ‘‘We have the whole country to
consider.”

Elise was not one to make her husband shirk his
duties. But in the matter of Poo Lorn she was
adamant.

“I don’t believe for a minute you had anything
to do with Poo Lorn turning rogue,” she argued.
'‘Besides, how do you think you’re going to help?
Haven’t we heard that forest ofificers who’ve lived
in the jungle for years have tried to trap Poo Lorn
without the slightest success? If they have failed,
why should you do any better?”

“Still, it’s up to me to have a shot at liim.”

“It’s not. But get into your riding-kit, quick.
You’ll be able to tell them lots of useful things about
Poo Lorn.”

Cairns hated being thought a coward, but he
mounted his pony, waved a cheerful farewell, and
galloped along the dusty cart-road towards the
capital.

At the conference there were forest officers both
white and Siamese, police ofScers, railway authori-
ties, several European merchants from Bangkok,
and numerous lesser lights.

Bichard Cairns was the first to be called upon.

“Mr. Cairns,” said the chairman, “we under-
stand that this elephant is supposed to have been
once in the service of your firm. Will you please
tell us all you know about him?”

“Thank you, Mr. Cairns,” said the Siamese
chairman, as he ended. . “Though, of course, you
cannot be blamed, you may be indirectly responsi-
ble.”

f “That’s what I’m afraid of, sir.”

“I^oubt it,” one of the forest officers said.
“Apparently more than a year elapsed before the
elephant Hanta head, ;tb .attack. In the

A CONFERENCE IS HELD 107

meantime some one else may have had a go at him.
Elephant-thieves, for instance, or some native chief
who’s kept the matter quiet.”

A pause followed; then a merchant broke in.

“Mr. Cairns knows the brute better than anyone
else. What does he suggest?”

“Beyond what has already been done, I don’t
see that I can suggest anything,” answered Cairns.

“Can’t suggest anything?” The merchant
banged his fist on the table. “But trade’s suffer-
ing badly. If we use river transport instead of the
railway, it’s a matter of weeks getting stores up
and down the country. Then take the state of the
telegraph service. We can’t even rely on that.
Never heard of such a thing. What’ll other nations,
think? The Lao country isolated from Siam by
the doings of one elephant! Preposterous! We
can't have this sort of thing.”

The chairman coughed. “Mr. Trevor,” he said,
“might tell us briefly some of the methods he has
adopted in trying to kill or capture the elephant.”

The forest officer complied, but the merchant re-
mained unsatisfied.

“But surely an elephant’s biff enough,” he com-
plained. “It’s not like looking for a needle in a
haystack.”

“It is not,” agreed Trevor, “It’s like looking
for a needle in the hundred haystacks. Northern
Siam consists of roughly forty thousand square
milOs of forest. The railway runs for at least two
hundred miles through this forest. Poo Lorn can '
strike at any point he likes, and when he likes, and
when the hot weather comes he disappears. Where
to, goodness knows.”

“You’ve got plenty of men and coolies.”

“That’s where you’re wrong, sir. Of late we’ve ^
hardly had a soul to assist us. We get no informar

108 POO LORN OF THE ELEPHANTS

tion out of the jungle villagers. They think that if
they tell he’ll take vengeance. They look upon him
now as a god, and it’s the same with the forest
hunters and trackers. In spite of huge rewards,
hardly a man comes forward.”

”Then make ’em come by force,” growled the
merchant.

“As regards what we ourselves have done,” con-
tinued Trevor, ignoring this absurd remark, “I
hope all gentlemen present will realise that we are
up against a beast that knows man — a far tougher
proposition than any rogue wild elephant.”

“Why,” cried the merchant, “one might think
that the brute could almost reason.''

“Why can’t it?”

“Why can’t it! No animal can reason.
They’ve only got instinct.”

“Instinct!” breathed the second F.O. “That
is a useful name for what we can’t understand.
Possibly animals can’t reason, but I’ve known tiger
and panther show the most extraordinary cunning,
and I believe they’ve got some kind of intelligence
of which we haven’t the ghost of an idea. Poo
Lorn, too, has this to a very marked degree,
and ”

“Gentlemen,” the chairman interrupted, “the
conference met to devise some plan for the elephant’s
capture. Perhaps, as Mr. Cairns knows Poo Lorn,
he will make another attempt at rounding up the
animal.”

Eichard Cairns rose to his feet, and the eyes of
everyone were upon him.

“I’m afraid I must refuse, sir,” he said steadily.

The chairman shrugged his shoulders.

“Well, of course, I can’t make you, Mr. Cairns.
But I should have thought ”

A CONFERENCE IS HELD 109

'‘Mr. Cairns, sir,'’ broke in Trevor, “has a wife
and child/’

“Ah!” said the chairman significantly. The
merchant from Bangkok flung up his hands in des-
pair.

Cairns flushed. “My decision has nothing to do
with my wife,” he said quickly.

“I beg to differ from Mr. Cairns,” Trevor said.

' I’ve met him once or twice in the jungle, and know
him to be almost without fear. I think he has shown
this just now in a somewhat convincing manner.”

A hum of approval went round the assembly. It
takes a brave man to face a charge of cowardice.

“Some years ago,” continued Trevor, “I heard
that Poo Lorn saved the life of a girl. That girl
was Elise Morrison. She is now Mrs. Eichard
Cairns.”

“Mr. Cairns,” said the Siamese courteously, “I
quite understand. Please accept my sincere apolo-
gies for having caused you pain.”

Cairns reddened still further and resumed his seat.

“Well,” the chairman observed, “we’re not
much nearer the capture of Poo Lorn than we were
an hour ago. We must have some plan of action
ready before the elephant returns to his old tricks,
as I’m sure he will, directly the rains have broken.”

“We must send for Clissen and Eedhill,” said
Trevor. “Clissen is in Africa, I believe, and Eed-
hill in the Malay States. But they’ll come to us,
I’m certain.”

The forest officer had reason for this remark.
Clissen and Eedhill were two of the most famous
big-game hunters in the world.

The proposal of Trevor was carried, and after
various preparations had been made for the guard-
ing of the railway, the conference broke up.

CHAPTER XVll

.CAIENS SUSPECTS CHECK LEE

Tee south-west monsoon roared and lashed over tlie
tree-tops, bringing rain and yet more rain over the
hills from the distant sea. Cairns returned one
gloomy morning from an inspection trip, to find
Blise awaiting him at the top of the bungalow steps.

“And now,” said she, “I’m going to show you
I don’t always try to keep you out of danger.”

“Why? What’s the matter?” he asked.

“Listen. A native has just arrived saying that
a man-eating tiger is harrying his village. He wants
you to help him, and I think you ought to go.”

A brown Lao told them that the inhabitants of
his village, which lay three days’ journey away to
the north-east, lived in fear and trembling, as dur-
ing the last fortnight a tiger had seized and carried
off two men and a woman from their midst. Would
the white lord condescend to come to the aid of his
humble servants?

Cairns responded with alacrity. He seized his
heavy rifle, and, accompanied by some carrier
coolies, set out at once on the dangerous adventure.
Arrived at the village, he camped near it and began
the tracking of the man-eater. But the tiger ap-
peared to be another Poo Lorn for cunning, and
after a week’s fruitless efforts, as a last resort, he
ordered the villagers to dig a concealed pit.

^ To his surprise the men informed him that a huge
pit aljfeady existed some eight miles from their
habitation; The pit, they said, would requim re-
levelling, tp a certain extent, but once this had been

CAIRNS SUSPECTS CHECK LEE 111

done it would serve excellently for the purpose of
trapping the tiger.

Cairns knew the inherent laziness of the native.
The pit of which they spoke was too distant from
the scene of the tiger’s activities, and so he ordered
them to dig a new pit in a suitable clearing nearby.
But his curiosity was aroused. While they were

The killer leapt up at the sides of its prison.

employed at this task, he took a guide and plunged
through the forest. He came to the remains of a
crater large enough to trap the biggest elephant,
and returning thoughtfully to the villagers, he asked
them the reason for the old pit’s existence. They
professed complete ignorance. Cairns saw that they
were lying, and concentrated on the capture of the

112 POO LORN OF THE ELEPHANTS

tiger. With the man-eater slain, information of
value might be forthcoming.

Cairns got that tiger. Attracted by a live bait
tied to a stump in the ground, it crashed into the
trap made by the villagers, and Cairns, descending
from his machan, raised his rifle. On seeing him
the killer leapt up at the sides of its prison in a
flaring paroxysm of rage, only to fall back dead a
moment later, shot through the head.

The carcass was carried in triumph to the village,
and a celebration was held. Bonfires were lit, round
which the inhabitants danced and sang. Much
palm-toddy was consumed, and tongues wagged
freely. Cairns questioned cleverly, and he learnt
that a Chinaman had been responsible for the dig-
ging of the huge pit he had seen.

“Hal” said Cairns. “And what happened
then?”

“Lord,” answered one of the villagers, “we
know not. We only heard that a great wild ele-
phant, the size of a hundred bulls, was captured'
and taken away secretly in the night.”

“In what year did this happen?”

“It was the Year of the Rat, when the great hot
weather prevailed.”

Cairns marched back to Ban Tern. So this par-
ticular elephant had been captured about the same
time as he himself had chased Poo Lorn. He would
pay Check Lee a visit on his way to the bungalow.

In the Chinaman’s teak house Richard Cairns
was offered tea, which he refused. He told Check
Lee of certain information that had reached his
ears; then: “That elephant was Poo Lorn,” he
concluded in icy tones.

“It was a wild elephant,” smiled the other. “A
very big wild elephant, true, but

CAI.RNS SUSPECTS CHECE: LEE 113'

Lorn. For did I not know Poo Lorn in the days-
of your father-in-law?”

“Whether the elephant was Poo Lorn or not,
perhaps Check Lee would tell me what happened'
to the animal.”

“I sold it to a native chief over the Indo-China-
border,” answered the Chinaman blandly.

“And how long was the elephant in Check Lee’s
service before he sold it?”

The Chinaman paused before replying, for he saw
that his visitor was endeavouring to lead him into-
a trap.

“Mr. Cairns is very curious about this elephant,”
he parried.

“He is. And if you have no evil to hide, why
should you not answer me?”

“I sold the elephant a few moons after I had
c^aptured it.”

“But why the haste?”

“I had my reasons, Mr. Cairns.”

The white man was now almost certain of his
facts. After about a year the elephant had escaped.
These dates coincided with the sudden return of the
Chinaman to Ban Tern and the first havoc wrought
by Poo Lorn on the railway a month or so later.

Yet where was proof to be found ? All that Cairns-
could do would be to report his suspicions and thus
relieve his own conscience. Beyond that, Check Lee
was no nearer imprisonment than before. Cairns
swore inwardly and swung on his heel.

“Mr. Cairns,” the Chinaman’s voice followed
him, “it would be well if you attended to your busi-
ness and left me to mine.” The words were as
smooth as silk, but a hidden threat lay in them.

The white man did not reply. He pushed aside
the fawning Sang Noo and strode up to his-
bungalow.

114 POO LOBN OF THE ELEPHANTS

“I’ve shot the tiger, and found out something
about Check Lee,’’ he told his wife.

“And I’ve news, too,’’ she said soberly. “Poo
Lorn has returned to the country and caused a
ghastly railway accident. A price of twenty thou-
sand ticals has been put on his head, and the whole
of the capital is beside itself with fright. Oh, Dick,
when is all this horror going to come to an end?’’

Eichard Cairns’s eyes blazed.

“And there sits the devil that’s the cause of it
all!’’ he cried. “Not content with bleeding the
local people, he brings this new disaster to the coun-
try. The man’s guilty, and I’d like to see him
crushed under the feet of the very beast he made
turn rogue.’’

CHAPTER XVIIl

THE END OP THE TEEEOE

Clissen was in Mombasa when he received the re-
quest of the Siamese Government, and he hastened
to respond to the call. Redhill, too, left post-haste
for Siam. Both men arrived in the same week at
Bangkok, but not till the rains were nearly over.

Meanwhile Poo Lorn had caused more and more
alarm threiighout the country. Isolated villages
woreuaided, and in spite of every precaution, further
damage was done to the railway. He would let
wedks go by without a sign of him, then out he
would come, a huge shadow darker than the night,
aqd strike at some jwint of the line miles away from
the spot where he had last appeared. Thus tihe

THE END OF THE TBBKOR 115*

officials were always kept guessing as to what his
next move would be.

Poo Lorn’s reputation was by now tremendous.
Tn the jungle hamlets mothers frightened picca-
ninnies into obedience by the mere mention of his
name; whole villages made a practice of placing
offerings in the shape of rice and fruit outside their
stockades in the hopes that Poo Lorn would leave
them unmolested; even the scattered white popu-
lation almost came to believe the natives’ tales
that Poo Lorn was a god in disguise, for the wildest
stories were told, and the elephant was credited
with many acts which were totally beyond his
strength to accomplish.

Clissen and Eedhill refused all offers in the shape
of tame elephants and regal camp equipments.
They had eyes like hawks, and could shadow, track
and shoot better than any native living. A large
number of camp followers would merely serve to
hamper them, they said : they required only four
coolies to carry the barest necessities of life.

With these men they set out for the north. The
rains having cleared, the jungle was beginning to
dry up. Day after day they stalked through the
forest bordering the railway line, sometimes work-
ing together, more often apart. They brought to
the tracking of Poo Lorn all their immense skill and
experience. Eventually they triumphantly shot a
vast elephant. But as, in spite of their theories,
this was not Poo Lorn, their triumph made no ap-
preciable difference to his progress.

When the next rains broke, Poo Lorn returned to
his beloved railway, but found that all manner of
devices had been placed along the line. Bamboo*
spears about six inches high hurt his feet cruelly.
In some places deep trenches had been dug parallel

116 POO LORN OF THE ELEPHANTS

to the track. An elephant can ford rivers and
negotiate mountains, but a ditch v^ill stop it com-
pletely, because no elephant can jump.

After several narrow escapes Poo Lorn resolved
to abandon the railway for good and all. He went
at random through the forest in a northerly direc-
tion till by chance he struck the only road in the
Lao country. This ran from the head of the rail-
way at Lakon Lampang to Chiengrai, the last out-
post on the borders of Northern Siam, and it was
thus the sole link between Siam and the various
Shan and Indo-Chinese states.

Along this road, fringed by two hundred miles of
virgin jungle, strange dusky tribes, trading in fox-
skins, walnuts, jungle-cloth, and tobacco, met one
another for the first time. Black Kamoos, with
white headbands and bags of rice rolled round their
waists, padded along from their mountain homes in
search of work in the Siam teak forests. Fierce
yellow Haws, armed with swords and blunderbus-
ses and accompanied by black-coated, black-tong-
ued Chow dogs, drove caravans of mules laden witli
produce to sell at the railway head. Turbaned
Shans, long-garbed brown Burmese, placid Laos,
meek Lens and Karens, one and all went up and
down the highway on their lawful and unlawful
occasions. Sometimes small crazy motor omni-
buses, carrying passengers and light articles, went
snorting by them, scattering pack bullocks, mules,
ponies and dogs in all directions. The passengers
grinned and the caravan drivers yelled. Then the
frightened animals collected again with tinkling of
bells and creaking of girths, and the processions
moved forward, bound for the noisy stench of the
market-place at Lakon.

Poo Lorn reached the road where it climbs over
a steep pass to the water-shed of the Mae Huat.

THE END OF THE TERROR 117

On the left towered huge walls of rock, their lower
slopes covered with thick vegetation. To the right,
on the farther side of the road, a precipice fell sheer
to the tree-mantled River Mae Hiiat.

Concealed in the tangle near the foot of the rocks,
he watched the road. Presently a monster, much
smaller than those on the railway, came fussing up
the incline. Poo Lorn charged it in broad daylight.
The driver could not put on speed and the road was
too narrow to turn. He jammed on his brakes and
leapt out. The passengers speedily followed and
fled in a yelling mob down the hill. Poo Lorn
heaved the deserted bus over the precipice.

The road proved a good deal easier to raid than
the railway line. One bus company after another
dosed down; caravan traders ceased their activities.
In a few months the highway was serving only as
a path for tiger and panther.

When the cold weather arrived Poo Lorn had
had enough of vengeance. He had taught the
humans a terrible lesson, and now he would leave
them alone for ever. He moved at leisure through
the forest on a line parallel with the empty road,
grazing and bathing as he went; but after a few
days he came to the borders of the biggest village
ho had ever seen. Ahead of him lay a vast stretch
of paddy-fields, now covered with dry stubble, for
the month was early January and the harvest
already gathered. Behind rose the prongs of
temples and the thatches of countless houses. Be-
tween the fields and the houses a black mass of men
had assembled.

Poo Lorn was gazing upon the outskirts of Lakon
Lampang. Naturally he did not know this, but he
did know that here a magnificent opportunity pre-
sented itself. He was thirty-five years of age and
in the very prime of his strength. Like every other

118 POO LOPN OF THE ELEPHANTS

big tusker, he was fully aware of his own impor-
tance, and his easy victories on the Chiengrai road
had made him over-confident. For tv*o and a half
years he had stalked the country, driving and scat-
tering the men-animals in much the same manner
as a giant disturbs nests of ants. Poo Lorn, as he
gazed at the distant throngs, held them in utter
contempt.

Curiosity and the desire to Jo mischief over-
whelmed him. His resolve to quit raiding van-
ished. He grunted and threw dust over him.self,
then noiselessly mufiied over the playing-fields, em-
barking on the most talked-of episode of his career.

The cause of the throng is easily explained. The
yearly Christmas meeting of the up-country teak-
wallahs was in progress, an event widely known
throughout the district. In the club grounds on the
borders of the paddy-fields all manner of games
would be fought out, notably a hotly contested game
of polo. This year a very high Personage indeed had
consented to present the cup to the winning team.

This Personage was sent up from Bangkok by
the King of Siam on a general tour of the north,
to report on trade and local government. He had
also been directed to bring information about Poo
Lorn’s activities.

The news had attracted thousands of natives to
the club grounds, and the scene sparkled with life
and colour, A huge marquee had been erected, and
from chairs along the edge of the field the notabili-
ties watched the game in progress. The very high
Personage- wore the uniform of a Siamese general,
and his breast glittered, with a. marvellous array of
medals’, Next to him were his personal staff and
their ladies in b^ai^tiful green,' red or blue panungs

THE END OF THE TERROR 119

of matchless silk. Near these sat some of the teak-
wallahs not actually engaged in the polo. Eichard
Cairns and Elise sat in their company, while little
Elise, now nearly four, struggled with her Lao ayah
in a frantic endeavour to crumple her spotless new
frock. A few missionaries and consuls and their
wives completed the white company.

Behind the chairs Siamese gendarmes, clothed in
khaki and solemnity, kept order among the mobs
of excited Laos, Burmese, Shans, Indians and
Chinese.

The game was waxing fast and furious. The
click of the stick on the bamboo ball, the thunder
*of galloping hooves, and the evening sun combined
to please both eye and ear.

Then Poo Lorn arrived. How he came near the
throng without someone giving a warning yell no-
body knew. In the main the crowd were too inter-
ested in the meeting to give a thought to what took
place behind them, while the few natives who did
happen to see Poo Lorn approaching promptly
threw themselves fiat on the ground in abject fear.

Poo Lorn burst into the polo field and trumpeted,
whereupon the meeting ended in a scene of in-
describable confusion. The polo ponies, scared by
this giant creature, bolted in all directions, and so
did the crowd. The very high Personage found
himself running side by side with sweating coolies
and ragged Indian pedlars. Cairns, carrying his
child on one arm and leading Elise with the other,
got them unscathed through the mob and into a
large bungalow belonging to one of the teak com-
panies. The remainder of the crowd escaped, and
by the time Poo Lorn arrived at the marquee the
whole of the club enclosure had emptied.

The marquee required attention. He pulled it
down and trod it savagely to a shapeless wreck.

120 POO LOEN OF THE ELEPHANTS

This done, Poo Lorn made for a small well he had
noticed at one side of the field. He drank, squirted
water over his back, and then, as if utterly disdain-
ful of the humans he had routed, rested under the
shade of a spreading banyan tree.

By now the crowds had sorted themselves out to
a certain extent. Most of the natives had bolted
to their homes, while the whites, together with the
Siamese nobleman and his followers, had assembled
in the Umphur’s large house. There a hurried con-
sultation had taken place, as a result of which
several heavy rifles had been produced from some
of the neighbouring bungalows.

“And now,'’ said the nobleman, who, like every *
educated Siamese, spoke perfect English, “for
goodness’ sake let’s have the elephant shot. Here’s
our chance at last.”

To his surprise, the spokesman of a group of
teak-wallahs coughed and fidgeted.

“We’ll go out, sir, but we can’t guarantee to
shoot Poo Lorn unless he attacks us.”

“What!” cried the astonished nobleman, scarce
able to believe his ears.

Briefly the other explained. They, the teak-
wallahs, lived amongst elephants, and it was their
proud boast that never had they laid one of these
great animals low in the dust- Indeed, they did
not even know the vital shot to the brain that is
necessary to kill the elephant outright. There was
a danger, therefore, that Poo Lorn might only be
wounded and thus goaded to further destruction.

“We must risk that,” answered the nobleman.

“But think, sir. Poo Lorn has never killed save
in self-defence. He may have gone for the railway
line and the Ohiengrai road, but what’s that to do-
with us teak-wallahs? I reckon it’s for the Govern-
ment to settle him, not us.”*

, THJI END OF THE TBRROE m

For a while the Siamese stared incredulously at
the speaker, then the truth dawned on him. Here
was an example of what the white race called
* ‘sport,’’ and his quick wit took in the humour of
the situation. He put back his head and laughed
and laughed.

“Still, Poo Lorn must be shot,” said he, relaps-
ing into gravity. “Let’s go to the edge of the
fields and have a look at him. But first, will you
teak fellows promise to shoot if he charges us?”

“We will,” they agreed.

Poo Lorn was still under his tree, and the wonder
of him left the spectators speechless. Here at last
towered the great animal who for years had fought
a lone battle with a nation. Sublime, unconquer-
able, he loomed high above the pygmies he had put
to rout.

Natives tiptoed fearfully towards him, and soon
long lines of brown figures were crouching on the
dusty road outside the field. The figures swayed,
bowed, straightened. A queer high-pitched chant
rose in unison. They called Poo Lorn “My Lord
King”; they begged him to take pity on his ser-
vants and depart in peace; they prayed also for his
happiness and well-being. They were quite sin-
cere : not one of them wished to kill him. A god
before, he was a god of gods to them now.

Only the slightest of movements came from some
of the watching teak-wallahs, Eichard Cairns had
silently joined them, carrying a pair of field-glasses.
Through them he gazed at the massive figure. He
whispered to a companion and passed the glasses
on. When three or four had looked through them
a stir of anticipation went round the crowd. Poo
Lorn was moving from beneath the tree.

The elephant walked straight towards the road.

122 POO LORN OF THE ELEPHANTS

The memory of his old grazing grounds beyond Ban
Tern had called, for there the glades were cool and
water abounded. In these grounds he would re-
main for the rest of his days, only quitting them
occasionally in order to make his secret journeys to
the north.

Though the grounds were many miles away, and
he in a strange town, his wonderful sense of direc-
tion guided him unerringly. He swung out on to
the road and passed through the onlookers. The
latter made no attempt to run. The simpler folk
prostrated themselves on the edges of the road,
while the white men and the nobleman and his
retinue stood stiffly with their arms at their sides,
fascinated. The greatest living creature in the
whole of Asia passed them by without a glance to
left or right.

His way took him through the markct-p!a('n.
There the chatter stilled. Man, woman and child
bow'ed low in the dust. Poo Lorn the Terrible,
their Lord King, was pleased to use their hiuriblc
thoroughfare as a path for his mighty feet. They
pressed the palms of their hands together and bowed
low.

The broad track dwindled to a rough cart-road.
The jungle leapt up in a living wall of green. Poo
Lorn plunged into the jungle, heading north-cnst
for his grazing grounds. In the distance there
sounded the beating of drums by the men he nt((‘rly
despised.

All that night the market-place was astir. Flares
hissed over swarthy faces and flashing teeth; drums
and gongs rolled out messages and salutations.
The day had brought good omens. By his beha-
viour it appeared that the god-like Poo Lorn had
shown his majesty for the last time : henceforth he

TRIAL AND REVENGE OF CHECK LEE 123

would leave his subjects in peace. The drums rol-
led messages of joy; they rolled also salutes to the
great animal the population worshipped. Incense
burned, candles were lit, and men chanted till the
grey dawn swept the night across the hills.

In a large bungalow on the outskirts of the town
Eichard Cairns lay awake until the small hours.
He had proof and witnesses at last. Check Lee,
body-snatcher, elephant-thief and baby-killer, was
nearing the end of his career of crime, and the
long arms of the law would soon enfold him. For
Cairns had seen through his field-glasses the well-
known brand of Check Lee marked on either flank
of Poo Lorn, and beneath these brands had showed
the fainter markings of his own teak company.
Clear proof was now available that the Chinaman
had stolen the elephant for unlawful purposes.

Eichard Cairns’s eyes glinted. In the arrest of
.Check Lee he owed a duty iot only to his firm, but
to the entire community.

CHAPTER XIX

THE TEIAL AND EBYENGE OF CHECK LEE

Cairns did not return immediately to his forest
after the meeting. Instead, he had conversations
with police officers, consuls and native lawyers. All
knew the evil reputation of Check Lee, the China-
man, and agreed that a chance offered of bringing
the miscreant to jail. Several independent witnesses
had seen the brand of Check Lee over the fainter
brand of the white man’s firm. The charge would
be that Check Lee, knowing the animal belonged

124 POO LORN OF THE ELEPHANT,S

to the teak company, had captured it for his own
purposes. If found guilty, the Chinaman would
receive a severe sentence, for the stealing of an ele-
phant was regarded by the Court as an extremely
serious offence.

A warrant was got out and the police acted
quickly lest the Chinaman should flee for the China
border. Gendarmes were sent in secret to Ban Tern ,
and returned bringing Check Lee with them.

At once the complicated business of collecting
witnesses began. Check Lee engaged a clever and
unscrupulous native lawyer for his defence, and the
two insisted on witnesses from various remote parts
being called. Days dragged into weeks, but at last,
on a burning March morning, Cairns received new^s
that the trial would begin in five days' time.

The summons found him in Ban Tern, for during
the long delay he had been obliged to leave liakon
in. order to supervise h*is forest work. He kissed
his wife and daughter good-bye cheerfully, but Elisc
looked anxious.

'T'm afraid of Check Lee,*’ she whispered. *‘If
he gets off at the trial he will come back here ami
be our enemy for life. I wish he didn't live so near
to us.”

”Well, we can’t turn back now,” said her hus-
band quietly. “Besides, what about the children
he’s starved and the natives he's ruined?”

“Dick, you're right. Go ahead and do your best
to get him convicted.”

But Check Lee was acquitted. He had money,
and money was power, Ai Kharn, now eking out
a miserable existence in a small tobacco plantation
near .Ban Tern, had been called for the defence.
Bribed handsomely by Check Lee, he swore on oath
that the elephant captured in the pit had certainly

TRIAL AND REVENGE OP CHECK L E E 125

not been Poo Lorn, and that never once during his.
service with Check Lee had he seen a sign of the
great tusker.

The simple Laos from the village where the pit
had been dug were twisted inside out by the China-
man’s lawyer. At the end of an hour’s gruelling
cross-examination they had contradicted themselves
a dozen times. The atmosphere in the crowded
court was stifling. Witnesses both for the defence
and prosecution became mazed with the heat and
the torrents of words. Only the white men who had
seen Poo Lorn’s brands through the field-glasses
kept comparatively cool; but though their evidence
could not be shaken, doubt was cast by the lawyer
as to whether the brand had been that of Check Lee.
There were dozens of different Chinise brands in
existence, all of which looked very much alike.
Could the great white lords who spoke for the prose-
cution read Chinese characters? They could not?
Well, well ! The lawyer spread eloquent hands and
appealed to his lordship.

The Siamese judge, aware that the evidence was
not sufficient to convict, was forced to pronounce
the prisoner not guilty. Check Lee grinned evilly
and left the court with no official stain upon his
character, while the onlookers swore under theii-
breath, for the man was hated throughout the length
and breadth of the land.

Eichard Cairns rode back to Ban Tern, worried
and disappointed. Check Lee returned to his teak
house in the village.

The weeks passed without event, for Check Lee
was no fool. Whenever he met wffiite people in the
market-place he bowed courteously and inquired
after their healths. He showed no signs of rancour,
and gradually the fears of the others were allayed.

It was not till the end of May that Check Lee

126 POO LORN OF THE ELEPHANTS

struck. He sent secretly for Ai Kharn, who arri\ed
at his house after dark had fallen.

“Ai Kharn,” said he, “thou hast spent all the
money I gave thee?”

“Great One, I have.”

“That is bad, for doubtless a tobacco plantation
yields much work and little profit.”

“The lord speaks the Wth,” answered Ai
Kharn.

“Now supposing Ai Kharn ^vere promised the sum
-of one thousand ticals. What would be be pre-
pared to do to earn that sum?”

One thousand ticals! The sum was a fortune.
With it one could buy paddy-fields, pigs and buffa-
loes, and have fish-curry every night.

“Great One, I would do anything for such a
sum.”

.Check Lee hissed with satisfaction. ‘‘Then that
amount will be thine if thou wilt steal the lord
Cairns’s little daughter,” he said quickly.

Ai Kharn gasped, and the Chinaman rapidly out-
lined his plan. During the hot weather the white
man and his wife were in the habit of going for
rides in the cool of the evening, leaving the child in
the care of the Lao ayah, who had lately got into
the habit of sauntering a short way up one of the
jungle paths at the back of the company*s premises.
This she was forbidden to do; but the ayah, being
young and pretty, had a lover.

Ai Kharn was doubtful. There would be much
danger, he explained; moreover, what w^as he to do
with the child?

“That is for Ai Kharn to decide,” smiled Check
Lee. “It could, for instance, be dropped in a
lonely part of the forest, Ai Kharn could then
make for the border and live in ease for the remain-
der of his days.'

TEIAL AND REVENGE OF CHECK L E E 127

Ai Kharn went out into the night to consider the
proposition.

The reward exceeded his wildest dreams, but were
he to abandon the child he would be guilty of mur-
der. The executioner’s sword, bright and hissing,
flashed through his mind. Ai Kharn proceeded to
the grog-shop of the village and tossed down a dram
of fiery palm spirit. After two or three gulps he
thought how he could earn the reward and at the
same time be guiltless of murder. In his numer-
ous journeys through the forest he had once passed
a queer village eighty miles due north of Ban Tern.
Built right in the heart of the jungle, it was entirely
cut off from the normal haunts of men. To this
place he would take the child, secretly deposit it
at dead of night near the headman’s hut, and then
carry on alone to the border. The parents might
or might not trace the child, but the odds were that
many moons would elapse first. Meanwhile the
villagers would take care of it. They might leave
it to die, of course, but that was their affair. Ai
Kharn would not be directly responsible for its
death.

Four days’ journey, he reckoned, should bring
him to the village. He would use no paths, but cut
straight through the jungle. The hot weather would
assist him in his escape, for the ground was now
too hard for tell-tale footprints. For food a small
bag of rice and some buffalo milk would suffice.

Ai Kharn went back to the Chinaman, resolved
to mention nothing of his decision. He would pro-
mise unconditionally to carry out the other’s wishes.

“Great One,” said he, “I do what you ask, but
I require two thousand ticals for the service.”

“I give fifteen hundred.”

“As the lord wills,” said Ai Kharn meekly, sur-

jLi30 FOO LORN OF THE ELEPHANTS

prised at the ease with which he had clinched the
bargain. “The Great One will give me the sum
now?”

Check Lee frowned, but there was no other way.
It would not do for the man to make a second visit
to the house. Check Lee extracted from his safe
■fifteen hundred dirty one-tical notes, but the mahout
regarded the mass of paper with dismay.

“Great One, I fear for all these notes,” he said.
“Eivers will have to be crossed, also the rains may
break at any moment. The money may be value-
less before ever I reach the border.”

“Then will I give thee a large tin in which to
place it.”

“Lord, I cannot afford the extra weight. Also
...” Ai Kharn paused, striving to gain time.
The notes might be forgeries. He would never be
able to return to Siam, and thus the Chinaman
would have tricked him cleverly.

Check Lee read the other’s thoughts, and smiled.
'The money was perfectly genuine, but Ai Kharn’ s
objections were reasonable enough. Well, the notes
must be exchanged for others of a higher value.
But who could do this service?

Now Check Lee loved his little joke, and his
natural vanity prompted him to play a grim jest
on the white lord whom he hated. ISe knew that
Eichard Cairns liked to have a plentiful supply of
small notes with which to pay his mahouts and
coolies. He would send Sang Noo to the company
office next morning to change them, Ai Kharn
would be satisfied, and the white man would be
producing the very money that w^as to pay for tlu^
kidnapping of his child. As for any suspicion fall-
ing on Check Lee, he would take good care to pro-
duce proof that Cairns’s notes had been paid out to
some person other than Ai Kharn.

TRIAL AND REVENGE OF CHECK LEE 129

“Ai Kharn/' said Check Lee, ‘*to-morrow night
thou shalt have fifteen one-hundred-tical notes from
the office of the great company itself. Thou art
satisfied?”

“Great One, I am.”

“Then go.”

In the morning, to make doubly sure, Ai Eharn
crept to the company compound and crouched be-
hind the hedge till he saw the cringing Sang Noo,
carrying the bundle of one-tical notes, disappear in-
to the white man's office and reappear with a small
envelope.

When dark fell he went to Check Lee, who hand-
ed him a tiny airtight tin which weighed next to
nothing and would keep the precious money from
damp. Ai Kharn slid it into his clothes and listened
to some final instructions.

“Thou wilt be watched,” the Chinaman warned
him; “so see that thou dost not leave till the child
is thine. And remember: once over the border,
Siam is denied thee.”

Ai Kharn bowed himself out. Late next after-
noon he hid in the jungle behind the company's
premises. When evening came he saw the ayah
lead the child up the forest path. He sneaked
through the trees and presently saw the ayah stop
to look round for her lover, who had not yet ap-
peared. The child ran to pluck a flower that grew
on one side of the path.

Like a tiger Ai Kharn sprang. In a flash he had
seized the child. Putting his free hand over her
mouth to prevent her screaming, he darted back
into cover unseen and unheard. After a few seconds
there was a shriek as the ayah noted the absence
of her charge; but without turning his head Ai
Kharn raced through the rapidly increasing gloom.

CHAPTER XX

THE AGONY OF RICHARD AND ELISE

The light was falling when Elise and her husband
returned. They did not find their little daughter
laughing and splashing in her bath, nor was her
nurse in the bungalow. From some of the com-
pound coolies they learned that less than an hour
ago the ayah had been seen to take the child for a
walk.

Accompanied by the coolies, they hastened in the
direction indicated. They called, but no answer
came save the mocking echo of their voices from
the gloomy trees. The party beat through the jungle
on each side of the path till dark had fallen, and
then the coolies, fearful of tigers and devils, huddled
into terrified groups and refused to go farther.

Cairns seized his wife’s arm. “To the village,”
he said urgently. “Show me where the ay all
lives.”

Ten minutes later the pair arrived at the ram-
shackle hut where the girl had her home. They
climbed up the ladder, brushed aside the rushes that
guarded the entrance, and stepped into the light.
The ayah was rocking from side to side on the
split bamboo floor, tears streaming down her brown
cheeks.

“The child?” said Cairns harshly.

The ayah babbled. A devil had taken the child
... the devil leapt out of the jungle at her . , .
it had possessed horns and molten breath. . . .

“And why didst thou not leave word at the com-
pound?’’

THE AGONY OF RICHARD AND ELISE 131

“Lord, I was very much afraid. I avoid the
compound and run quickly home.”

The white man wasted no time. He and Elise
rushed to their bungalow, seized lanterns, and went
once more up the forest path. For hour after hour
they searched and listened for the reply that never
came. At last, long past midnight, Elise collapsed.
Eichard picked her up and carried her to the bun-
galow. He laid her on the bed and forced brandy
between her lips. She struggled upright.

“Dick. It’s not true. Tell me it’s not true.”
In the dim light of an oil-lamp suspended from the
ceiling she looked white, fey, unearthly.

He did not reply, but pillowed her head on his
shoulder. The silent hours passed, and at dawn
they set out again with a large search-party. By
eight o’clock in the morning Cairns was convinced
that the child had been kidnapped. Nowhere could
signs of blood be found. The possibility of some
wild animal having taken her was therefore no
longer to be considered. He must track down the
man responsible for the terrible crime.

Cairns strode down to the village of Ban .Teni?
where he went from hut to hut making certain
inquiries. His object was to discover whether any
villager might be unaccountably missing from his
home. In this he was aided greatly by the inhabi-
tants, who all loved the little girl and her mother.
They searched far and wide and brought news that
Ai Kharn was absent from his hut in the tobacco
plantation.

Cairns hastened to that hut. It bore signs of a
hurried departure, and the truth flashed across his
mind. Ai Kharn had given evidence on behalf of
Check Lee during the recent trial; Ai Kharn had
been summarily dismissed from the company’s ser-
i;'ice and had scant cause to love him, Cairns.

132 POO LORN OF THE ELEPHANT^

Lastly, why had Check Lee changed that large
amount of money two days previously?

Eichard Cairns entered the house of the China-
man. “My child has been lost,” he said, and his
face was white to the lips.

Check Lee was visibly distressed. The little flower
lost or kidnapped? Impossible! He could not
believe it. He would send men in an immediate
search for the culprit.

Cairns seized the Chinaman’s scrawny throat.
His lean fingers were hard as steel bands and his
eyes were merciless. “The truth, 0 Chinaman, or
thou diest here and now,” he hissed.

But Check Lee had courage. Not by the flicker
of a muscle did he betray fear, and reluctantly
Cairns loosened his grip. Check Lee passed a hand
across his throat.

“The white lord is not quite himself,” he said
affably. “Check Lee forgets the discourtesy.”

Cairns forced back his desire to kill the man.

“Where are those notes?” he asked.

“The notes? Yesterday I buy a farm and pay
the owner with them.”

“Check Lee is not accustomed to buy farms. He
has most of them mortgaged already.”

The Chinaman smiled. “Sometimes I make ex-
ceptions. See, here is the contract for the sale.”

The speaker handed Cairns a sheet of paper be
had taken from his safe. On it was a deed of sale,
stamped, signed, sealed and witnessed. After glanc-
ing at it, Cairns abruptly left the house. Whether
the deed was forged or not could be discovered later;
meanwhile precious time was being wasted.

On his way to the bungalow Cairns thought ra-
pidly. The mahout would aim for the nearest por-
tion of the Indo-China border, which lay due east

THE AGONY OF RICHARD AND BLISB 133

from Ban Tern. To the border, therefore, he too
would go. But what should he do about Blise?

He told her of his discoveries, but she betrayed
little emotion. Sheer will-power and courage were
sustaining her.

“You must make for the border at once, then.
And you must go without me.“

“But I can’t possibly leave you here alone. You
must come.”

“No, Dick, we can work better apart. I shall
only keep you back, while if I stay in Ban Tern
I can send coolies for the police at Lakon and keep
on searching round the village in case Ai Kharn
hasn’t taken her after all. I can stand the loneli-
ness so long as I know we are doing our best.”

In the crisis both man and wife remained calm*
to an almost unhuman degree. Cairns collected
volunteers from the village and a few of his fastest
coolies, then set out for the border. With him alsO'
went the little dog he had rescued long ago from the
deserted bungalow in the forest. Of late years it
had been his constant companion, and now he de-
cided that the animal might prove useful in tracking
down the little girl with whom it had so often
played.

While Elise organised search-parties round Ban
Tern, Cairns pushed eastward. After four days’
fearful toil he reached the border just as the rains
were breaking. He made inquiries from several
Annamite villages, but none of the inhabitants had
seen anyone answering to the description of either
Ai Kharn or the child. Having satisfied himself
that the villagers were speaking the truth, there
was nothing for it but to return the way he had
come.

This he did, but, hoping against hope, he occa-
sionally made wide sweeps on the slight chance

134 POO LORN OF THE ELEPHANTS

that Ai Kharn might be hiding till the search should
wear itself out.

The path had been bad enough, but now the going
was beydnd description. The rains wore by this
time pouring heavily, making the ground moist and
slippery. Sharp rocks stabbed through Cairns’s
soles. Under dark evergreen leaves poisonous
snakes stirred, hissed, rustled coldly. Leeches
flicked themselves up his puttees, wormed their thin
slaty-black bodies through the lace-holes of his
boots, fed on feet, shins and knees. Mosquitoes,
sweat-bees, , ticks, and a thousand other horrors
clustered thick upon him. Thorns, creeper, vines,
and stinging grass plucked and tore at face and
clothing as he fought through the dim, unearthly
light.

At night they camped wherever they found them-
selves. A small clearing would be made and in it
the tents were pitched. But even at night little
rest came to Cairns. His bedding was soaked, the
ground sheet was alive with red ants, and leeches
made their painless bites and gorged at leisure. In
the morning their bloated, slug-like bodies lay black
across the sheets, and the flames of a match ended
them.

On the last night before Cairns gave up the search,
a further horror was added. He had sunk into a
troubled sleep, when a stifled yelp awoke him. He
heard the rush of some heavy body leaving his tent,
and he sprang through his mosquito-net. His elec-
tric torch showed that his little dog, which had been
sleeping near the bed, had vanished.

Cairns ran out of the tent and shouted. The
forest swallowed his voice. The trees dripped with
rain, and a night-bird called. He pointed the torch
ahead, to left, to right. Branches, living with
creeper, menaced him everywhere* Huge red and

THE AGONY OF RICHAED AND BLISB 135

yellow toadstools leered and sent breaths of fetid air
through the humid atmosphere. A bat swooped,
fluttered, passed. The rain grew heavier and the
earth and jungle steamed, pattered and hissed.

Cairns walked into his tent. He lit a hurricane
lantern, pulled on his mosquito-boots, drew a sodden
blanket round his shoulders, and sat huddled in his
camp-chair. The dog was gone, taken by the pan-
ther that must have been watching the clearing ever
since camp had been made that night.

C. p. BROWN
Dii

Here in this savage land the law of the strong
prevailed without justice or mercy. His child had
been taken away from him, then his dog. By the
time he reached Ban Tern he might find that his
wife had been murdered by the Chinaman.

Eichard Cairns hurled the blanket off him and

136 POO LORN OP THE ELEPHANTS
stood upright. For days he had scarcely touched
food, facing hardships that would have killed most
men. Now malaria had him in its relentless grip,
and though his limbs were still strong the fever was
spinning in his brain. He took his revolver out
of its holster and bent over the table. Holding the
weapon under the light of the lantern, he cleaned it
with exacting care, and when dawn paled over the
gloomy trees every speck of rust had vanished from
the barrel. He loaded each chamber, slipped the
weapon back into the holster, and barked sharp
orders to the coolies. They obeyed with alacrity,
for at last the white lord had decided to return to
the comfort and safety of Ban Tern.

On the following afternoon Eichard Cairns strode
over his compound on the way to the village. His
fevered brain told him that his wife was dead, and
there was no need to visit the bungalow as yet. !A.'
certain teak house beckoned, where he would riddle
the black-hearted Chinaman with bullets.

Half-way across the compound a form appeared
between him and his goal. He brushed it aside,
but it clung to him. As if against his will he found
himself listening to words, words that implored him
to come to a warm bed, eat warm food, rest.

His own will bent to that other force, and he saw
Elise standing in front of him. Sanity came back
to his brain, but with it his strength left him
abruptly.

''Elise, Fve failed you, failed you in every way
I could,’* he cried hoarsely.

Then merciful oblivion swept over the stricken
man.

The illness of Eichard Cairns proved the salva-
tion of his wife. During his absence Elisa had

THE AGONY OP RICHARD AND BLISE 137 ,

come near to a mental breakdown, but now the
need of nursing her husband occupied all her atten-
tion. She watched him by day and by night; and
when she snatched a few hours’ rest, queer dreams
haunted her sleep. She saw her child alive and
well, but in surroundings as dim and fantastic as
the dreams themselves. The visions comforted her,
and she began to accept them as facts. Some day
her darling would be playing again in the com-
pound; her loss was a nightmare that would fade.

After a week’s high fever Eichard had passed the
crisis. Pale and weak he lay on the bed, but his
pulse was normal and he was master of himself
once more.

“No news?’’ he whispered.

Elise shook her head, but hope shone in her eyes.

“She’s alive. I just know she is. When you
were ill I seemed to see her. Somewhere in the
jungle. ...”

Elise pressed her forehead, striving to regain those
elusive Yearns.

Eichard looked at her sadly. Her faith distressed
him, for little Elise had gone beyond recall. A
thought flashed through his mind.

“What have you told your mother?’- he asked.

“Nothing. I had a letter from her last week.”

She showed him the letter. It stated that the
Morrisons, after five years in England, were yearn-
ing for the Bast again. They would leave England,
so wrote her mother, in October. Thus they would
escape the winter and arrive in Siam when the rains
were over. They hoped to spend Christmas in Ban
Tern with their little granddaughter, whom they
were longing to see.

“What can I tell than?”

“You must tell them the truth.”

138 POO LORN OF THE ELEPHANTS

''That Elise is alive?'*

The words stabbed Eichard to the quick, and a
great fear chilled his heart.

“Darling," he said, “we won’t let your people
come out to us. I’ll take you home to them."

“I won’t go. How could I, with our child still
out here?"

Eichard checked a rising lump in his throat. The
only course for them was to leave the jungle imme-
diately. Once with her parents in England, Elise
would gradually recover from the shock; but to re-
main in the bungalow, hoping against hope, spelt
worse than death.

All his pleadings were, however, in vain, for Elise
was resolved to stay in Ban Tern. Eichard saw
that only one course remained. He must at once
tell the Morrisons of the tragedy, and ask them to
leave England earlier than they had planned. They
would soon persuade their daughter to come home
with them. He could then await a successor and
join them later. But, naturally, Elise must hear
only part of the proposal.

“Well, we must telegraph to your people and
ask them to come out to us as soon as they can."

' ‘No, I won’t hear of a telegram being sent. How
dan one explain anything in a telegram? Besides,
I don’t want to have Mother and Daddy out here
just yet. They will try to sympathise, and I don’t
want sympathy. There isn’t any need for it. Let
them come out if they wish, but not before the cold
weather begins. A march in the rains from Lakon
might' kill them/-

Eiohard bit his lip, for he knew that Elise’s real
reason was‘ to delay her parents’ arrival until the
child should be found again. Then he reached for
pen and paper, and wrote the most difficult letter
of his life. This he handed to a trusted odoli^ aiid

LOST IN THE FOREST 139

made sure that he left for the head of the railway
without Elise seeing.

When the man had gone, Bichard prayed for
strength. In the weeks that must elapse before the
Morrisons could complete their eight-thousand-mile
journey, he must bring all his will-power to help
Elise to stand seeing her hopes unfulfilled.

CHAPTER XXI

LOST IN THE EOBEST

Ai Kharn swept forward with the struggling child.
A hundred yards from the spot where he had trap-
ped her, he permitted her to breathe freely. She
screamed and cried, but the mahout took no heed.
He pushed on, anxious to put as many miles as pos-
sible between him and Ban Tern.

Soon the forest became pitch dark, but Ai Kharn
went steadily ahead. His eyes were capable of ex-
traordinary dilation, so that by night he could see
almost as well as an animal; and, guided by the
native’s sure sense of direction, he headed due north
for mile upon mile.

At midnight, careless of tiger or snakes, he slept,
the weary child lolling beside him. At dawn Elise’ s
crying woke him. She wore round her throat a
tiny gold necklace, and this Ai Kharn slipped off,
explaining that for safety’s sake he would keep it in
his <iin. He'then set himself to be as pleasant to her
as possible, for he realised, that, his task would be
extremely difficult should’ Elise give trouble. He
washed her at' a neighbouring pool and fed her with
rice and buffalo milk. Ip spite of her misery Elise

140 POO LORN OF THE ELEPHANTS

ate hungrily, and when she had finished he spoke to
her in Lao. He told her that the ayah was a wicked
woman from whom he had rescued her. He said
also that her mother was at present in a far-away
village, and that he had been ordered to take her
there. In three days’ time — two if she were good —
ehe would be safely with her mother again.

Little Elise gazed at him wide-eyed as she heard
the words. She wanted to believe him, for no child
<of that age understands lying; nevertheless there
was an expression in Ai Kharn’s villainous features
that she feared by instinct. Torn between terror
.and belief, she remained quiet for the rest of the
day, thus enabling Ai Kham to make good progress.

Two mornings later he came to a thick part of
•evergreen jungle that made travelling more difficult.
This, he knew, was part of the range where Poo
Lorn had grazed during the first years of his free-
dom; but now, Ai Kharn thought with relief, the
elephant was probably hundreds of miles away.
He therefore pushed on fearlessly, and after half an
hour’s scrambling he reached the limit of the ever-
green. Clear forest glades now stretched before
him, and he heaved a sigh of thankfulness.

Lowering the child to the ground, he rubbed his
niching arms and took a deep breath of the fresher
air. Havii^ rested, he was about to pick her up
when he froze to a motionless statue. Something
was advancing towards him through a leafy bamboo
screen ahead. His heart galloped with fear as,
scarcely daring to breathe, he waited for the un-
toKwn to appear.

The baniboos crackled, then a huge elephant strode
into view. It needed no second glance to tell Ai
Eham that Poo Lorn the Terrible was gazing at
him with red bfdelnl eyes that reflected the nn>
quendued hatred irf years.

LOST IN THE FOREST 141

Since Poo Lorn’s escape from Check Lee the
elephant had been a nightmare to Ai Kharn. Often
in his sleep he had dreamed that the giant creature
was chasing him. He even felt the curved tusks
tearing and ripping at his flesh, taking frightful
vengeance. But Pate had helped the mahout, for
in the years of the Terror Poo Lorn had never been
within miles of Ban Tern; yet, at the very moment
■of Ai Kharn’s triumph, he now loomed huge, re-
lentless, awe-inspiring to the last degree.

Ai Kham shook off the icy hands of fear. Ignor-
ing the child, he bolted for a hundred yards, then
climbed a suitable tree with lightning rapidity.
Without undue haste Poo Lorn followed him, and
came to rest at the foot of the refuge. Ten, twenty,
thirty minutes passed. The mahout’s features had
turned to an ashen pallor. Poo Lorn could remain
by the tree for days should he so wish.

But a gleam of hope soon showed, for Poo Lorn,
as if tired of waiting, moved a few paces towards
a bunch of thick grass, where he began to graze.
Ai Eharn slid down the tree and fled. Poo Lorn
bellowed and was after him again. Though his ven-
geance on mankind as a whole was at an end, the
elephant had instantly recognised his old enemy.
Yet he did not hurry, for the mahout was far away
from the haunts of humans, and thus absolutely at
bis mercy.

Ai Kharn turned, twisted, ducked and doubled.
But in vain; he could not shake off his pursuer. In
a final desperate effort he plunged into the thick
evergreen through which he had passed that morn-
ing. This proved his undoing, for the dense mass
of thorns and creeper impeded his progress, and
the sounds of the elephant drew rapidl]^ nearer.

Poo Lorn clove his great bulk through the ever-
green. Bushes and thorns fell away from him. A

142 POO LORN OF THE ELEPHANTS

lean body was flung ten feet into the air, to fall
spread-eagled on the ground. Poo Lorn knelt. Life
ended for Ai Kharn in a choking scream.

Poo Lorn grunted and, leaving the trampled
man, moved slowly back fche way he had come. He
tore down branches, with one clean sweep ripped
off the leaves, then chewed at leisure. Presently
a strange wailing sound echoed through the woods,
but he took no notice of it. He fed till he reached
clearer forest, w’hereupon a human scent was wafted
to him down the wind. The humans were, how-
ever, his friends the jungle people, and he therefore
suffered them to approach him. They had been
pleased at his return after so long an absence, and
they now salaamed in reverence and timidly placed
a large papaya at his feet. He ripped open the
fruit and ate it, and the jungle-people bowed tlieir
heads and withdrew.

Soon they also heard a strange sound in the
forest. Curious, they investigated, and to their as-
tonishment they beheld a small white child. The
jungle-people conversed in guttural monosyllables,
endeavouring to explain this to themselves. They
knew there existed brown men and brown women
who lived in large shanties on the banks of rivers,
but of white people they knew nothing. .They
pointed and -^shattered, making queer animal sounds
in their amazement. Then one of the women in
^tribe advanced boldly towards Blise and picked
her up, for she saw that, whatever her colour, the
child was. lost; -lonely and terror-stricken. Blise
bereamed and fought, but the woman tried to com-
fort' her. > ^

t The lungle-pec^jlC' decided to return to their huts,
but 4^' the; way. a^refcarkable’ sign was vouchsafed

LOST IN THE FOREST 143

them. Poo Lorn chanced to walk across their path,
and little Elise kicked herself free and ran to him.

Eor the whole of her little life the child had been
accustomed to elephants. She had ridden the com-
pany’s baggage animals, and many were the even-
ings when she had fed the gentlest of them with bun
and tamarind. As her parents had never allowed
her to approach the more unmanageable tuskers,
Elise had no idea that elephants could be savage.
To her they were gentle creatures, with whom she
loved to play. And now, amidst the terrifying
newness of her surroundings, she at last saw a fami-
liar object. Here after all these days was a creature
she knew, who would certainly carry her back to
her mother.

Poo Lorn gazed in wonder at this little creature,
he felt her with his trunk, and she tried to catch it
in her tiny hands. At the touch old emotions surged
up in him. His little friend had come to him again.

The jungle-people looked on astounded. Per-
haps their lord had brought the child to the forest,
since they evidently knew one another. Moreover,
why was the god swaying his bulk from side to side?
It must be his wish that they take the child to their
dwellings, else why had he carried her so close to
their settlement?

The woman picked up Elise, but Poo Lorn
showed no sign of remonstrance. The jungle-people
and Elise were the only humans who had ever
shown kindness to him. He rumbled deeply and
followed the party as they moved in Indian file
towards their colony.

The jungle-people arrived at some crazy-looking
leaf erections, into the largest of which they carried
the child. Elise had entered her new home.

CHAPTER XXII

JUNGLE NIGHTS AND JUNGLE DAYS

During the first week of her stay in the colony,
little Elise nearly died. She cried constantly for
her mother and refused to be comforted. But the
jungle-people, mindful of their duty to the great
elephant, tended her carefully. The rains had
broken and mosquitoes abounded. They smeared
her body with bark-juice to protect her from stings:
they fed her with jungle-fowl eggs, fruit and wild
honey, and gave her crude bamboo toys cut in the
shape of pig and deer. Gradually the child’s grief
was replaced by interest in her new surroundings.
She ceased her crying, ate hungrily, and soon was
able to accompany the women and children in their
quest for food.

She experienced countless marvels, for the jungle-
people were part of the jungle itself. They had
lived in it for generations and knew every one of
its secrets.

On the first day they came to a small round hole
in the earth. It meant nothing to Elise, but the
jungle-women jabbered excitedly. With the aid of
knife-edged stones they hacked down some bamboO'
stems, cut them into two-feet len^hs and joined
them cunningly at slight angles to one another.
This done, they placed one end of the improvised
stove-pipe into the hole, and at the other end heaped
a mound of damp leaves. By rubbing dry sticks
together they produced a spark, and soon the leaves
were smouldering. After half an. hour’s waiting
th^ lamoved the smoking bamboo pipe from the-

JUNGLE NIGHTS AND JUNGLE DAYS 145 -

earth. One of the women then put one arm far*
down into the hole. A second later, amidst excited
exclamations from the onlookers, she pulled out a*
suffocated animal. With shouts of triumph they
carried their prize, an enormous bamboo-rat, back
to the huts to be cooked and eaten.

Elise found that other kinds of food lived in-
holes. Crickets, for instance, were dug out, strung
together on long thin sticks, and roasted over the-
fire. Black hairy spiders, the size of one’s hand,
were also routed out from their burrows. Their
brittle fangs, a good half-inch in length, were-
broken off by the women’s quick fingers, whereupon-
the tarantulas were killed by heat and their bodies
hung over the entrances to the huts as charms
against evil spirits.

While the women and children kept close to the-
huts, the men, armed with bows and arrows, went
farther afield in their search for pig and deer. Occa-
sionally they encountered very different kinds of
prey. One morning they found a python curled'
round her nest of eggs. Since they hated all snake^
by instinct, they resolved to destroy both her and
the nest. All other species of snakes left their eggs
to be hatched out by the warmth of the sun, but
they knew that the python, the one exception to the-
rule, would remain at her post and fight to the last
in defence of her young. The jungle-people were-
also happily unaware of the legend that a python
can only exert a stranglehold if its tail is first twist-*
ed round some immovable object : they knew that a
python defends itself by opening its jaws and
lunging with its head. Though the fangs are not
poisonous, the head strikes like a cannon-ball, stun-
ning the victim if not killing him outright. A quick
crawl, a tightening of the steely folds, and every
bone of the victim is broken and ready for the gorge.

146 POO LORN OF THE ELEPHANTS

The jungle-people therefore kept at a wary dis-
tance from the nest. They collected boulders and
with much grunting placed them in the forks of a
tree close by, then rained them down till python
and nest were crushed out of existence. Then they
returned to the colony and told the women of their
prowess.

Though Elise encountered none of these dangers,
she soon learnt the lesser perils of the jungle. She
was taught to avoid the poisonous prickly bean that
if touched sets up unbearable irritation; she learnt
never to play with rotten fallen boughs, for in them
'lurk tiny yellow scorpions; she learnt that even
the smallest creature might deal sharp stinging
pain.

Yet there were many harmless living things of
sheer beauty that brought happiness to her little
soul. Queer insects, some like balls of cotton-
wool, some like brown wrinkled leaves, at times
moved slowly across the floor of the hut, while out-
side the air was alive with colour. Great gaudy
butterflies, their wings measuring nine inches from
tip to tip, flitted through the sunshine when the
monsoon clouds broke for a brief period. Golden
pheasants, jays, green parakeets, flickered and
■screamed, and in a tree directly overhead a giant
hornbill lived. His nest was inside the tree-trunk,
and he had walled in his mate lest she should neg-
lect her eggs. He had left a small hole through
which he could feed her, and all day long he would
sail through the air with food for his family. Elise
loved his harsh “Kok-kok-kok” as he whirred
along on huge flapping wings, and she loved his
•absurd beak and imgainly appearance. How that
hombill made her laugh 1

On the ground, too, was plenty of interest. She
liked the delicate green ^sitivoriflant which, when

JUNGLE NIGHTS AND JUNGLE DAYS 147

touched, would shrink as if frightened. Then there
were the queer animals that came hurrying past.
Mouse-deer no bigger than a liare, with perfect
miniature bodies, occasionally dashed by. The old
porcupine, fussing and rattling his quills, pro-
claimed his perpetual hurry. Lizards scuttled like
flashes of light over the grass. Once she tried to
catch one, but it left its tail behind in her hand.
Elise caught no more lizards.

With the sounds of the jungle, too, she soon be-
came familiar, She knew and could imitate the
soft whoo of the hairy gibbons that capered amongst
the branches high against the cloudy sky. The
bell of the sambhur, the hoarse cry of the barking-
deer, the plaintive bleat of the great horned buffalo
— all these she would try to copy; but the noises of
the night she made no effort to imitate. She hud-
dled up then against her foster-mother and listened
in awe to the voices of the darkened wilderness.
The moan of the tiger, the short ragged cough of
the panther, the long-drawn-out wail of the wild
dog baying the moon, and the howling of the
jackals, sent chills of fear through her and her com-
panions.

The sound she loved most was the deep rumble
that heralded Poo Lorn’s approach, for it was then
only that she was permitted to venture far from
the jungle-people. Eunning out to meet him; she
w^'Quld prod and pound him with the baby hands
that had sunk right into his heart.

Both the child and the beast were lonely, though
from different reasons, llise was lonely because
she was absent from her parents and her ’home :
Poo Ix)rn because for years he had had hate as his
sole companion. But now a new force had entered
into his life. He was aware of strange pleasurable
seiisaitions i^^henever he met Elise, and he there-

148 POO LORN OF THE ELEPHANTS

fore grew into the habit of visiting her nearly every
other day. Blise, copying the tricks of her father’s
mahouts, became bold enough to give him shrill
orders to kneel and lift her in his trunk. Poo Lorn
recognised the commands immediately and obeyed
them. Sometimes he would raise her to his fore-
head and allow her to scramble on to his neck.
They would then go for long saunters down the
silent forest glades. He seemed to know that he
held a precious life upon his head, for he never
forgot to tear out of his way any overhanging
branches that might harm the child.

As for Elise, secure and happy on her lofty perch,
those journeys thrilled her more than any previous
experience, for the strangest of sights were unfolded
to her, and many a jungle drama did she see. Deer,
with packs of yellow bushy-tailed wild dogs in pur-
suit, would blunder past them, and once she noticed
a great antlered sambhur at bay in a pool, knee-
deep in the water with head held low to ward off
attack. Bound the fringes of the pool the dogs
squatted on their haunches, waiting with lolling
tongues and heaving flanks for their prey to take to
flight. Elise did not see the end of it, for Poo
Lorn moved steadily ahead and the jungle swal-
lowed both hunters and hunted.

It was at one of these pools that Blise herself
had a narrow escape from destruction. Poo Lorn
had knelt to bathe, and Blise, sliding off him.
splashed and kicked in the warm shallow water.
Presently some huge plate-like water lilies on the
farther side of the pool attracted her attention and
she ran to examine them. She was bending over
them whra fear gripped her. Some danger threat-
«aed behind her, though she could not tell what.
She endemnred to scream and run bewsk to Poo
Lorn, but hear mce and kgs fiuled her Mri

150 POO LORN OF THE ELEPHANTS

stood rooted to the spot. Luckily Poo Lorn’s scent
was unerring. He smelt the hidden death, and tore
trumpeting past the child. The tiger that had been
stalking its prey snarled hideously and gave way
to the king of the jungle.

Poo Lorn, however, did fear some creatures, as
Elise found out one day. On one of her rides, sud-
denly, a nightmare snake rose from the under-
growth and hissed. It was slaty-black with whity-
yellow crescents along its spine, and a hood close
to its evil head. Poo Lorn fled, and it was only by
a miracle that Elise was not swept off and killed.
The king-cobra, or hamadryad, does not, like other
snakes, wait to be attacked. It comes without
warning, black, swift, terrible; and Poo Lorn
knew that against its deadly fangs even his mighty
strength would be of no avail.

Being only a child, Elise sometimes grew angry
with Poo Lorn. Seizing a stick, she would beat
him with the whole of her strength. Poo Lorn
loved it, for he liked being scratched. Then,
weeping bitterly because she imagined tiiat she liarf
hurt her greatest friend, Elise would feed him with
papaya and bananas, and generally make a fuss of
him till the waning light warned her that it was
time to ride back to the huts.

When Elise had been two months with the
jungle-people the rains cleared temporarily. For
a, week the sun shone out of a cloudless sky, and
the jungle-people decided to shift to another part
of the forest in search of new and undisturbed
gan^,.j .^Ijhis.was simple, for, beyond their weap-
ons and the smaller children, they had nothing to
carry. They abandoned their old huts, and after
a ten-mile walk throu^ the jungle arrived at the

JUNGLE NIGHTS aND JUNGLE DAYS 151

banks of a river, forded it at a shallow spot, and
•made a new colony beneath some frowning hills.

Though the vegetation was wet and gloomy, they
seemed to experience no difficulty in obtaining drj^
grass and leaves. The new huts were of huge inter-
laced leaves supported on thin bamboo stems. On
the ground they placed grass, which formed both
floor and bedding. Bound the outside of the huts
they scooped with their hands deep channels to
keep them from being flooded. The whole work
took only one day to complete, and by evening they
were safe and snug in their new settlement.

On the following morning the rains broke again.
For hour after hour water poured down, and when
darkness fell thunder rolled threateningly. The
rain now doubled in intensity and resembled one
vast cloudburst. A roaring wind surged through
the forest, setting the tree fronds lashing to and
fro. The thunder, booming and crackling round
the sky, rolled in continuous salvoes, while the
river rose from a lulling murmur to a full-throated
roar.

.Crouching in their draughty huts, the jungle-
folk shivered. Presently, above the thrum of the
river, they heard crashings and rumblings which
made them huddle together in abject fright.

The violence of the storm increased, and when
it reached its height the watchers heard the trump-
et of an elephant. They waited, awe-struck, till a
sheet of lightning illuminated Poo, Lorn looming
up before them. His great body was shiny black
from the water, and he was evidently uneasy, for
his trunk was threshing and his forefeet kicked at
the damp earth.

A sign had been given the jungle-people. Poo
Lorn had come to warn them ‘of danger^ Oomtprted
by his presence, they snatched up the children and

152 POO LORN OP THE ELEPHANTS

rushed out of the huts. The lightning flamed and
danced. Behind them rocks and boulders were
tumbling down the hills. On each side of them
mountain torrents were descending with terrific
force. Ahead of them lay the river they had cros-
sed two mornings ago. Then it had been easy to
ford, but now it was deep and swirling. Being
poor swimmers, they were cut off on all sides.

Poo Lorn lurched and made for the river-bank.
As he stood there, illuminated by lightning, the
jungle-people saw their one chance of survival.
With frantic hands they tore down strands of creep-
er from the trees. Doubtless their god would
suffer himself to be bound for the sole purpose of
saving the lives of his servants. They twisted the
strong thick creeper round his neck and sides, and
he remained quite quiet, for these people and the
child were his friends. He knelt, and the children
were strapped on to his back. The men and women
then grasped the loose ends of the creeper and Poo
Lorn plunged into the torrent. Even as he did
so, a rumbling avalanche swept down the hills.

Though one or two of the elder people weref
swept away, the majority of the tribe, soaked, buff-
eted, half-blinded by spray, hung on to their tow
'as the fury of the night swept round them. The
river was a torrent, boiling, bubbling, hissing with
rain, flaming into white ribbons of lightning, then
wallowing in pitch darkness; but through it all
Poo Lorn fought with his gigantic strength. He
emerged, dripping, on the opposite bank. The
jungle-people fell away from him. They tore the
, creeper from off his sides, salaamed to him in won-
der and reverence. Poo Lorn flapped his ears and
nosed for little Elise. Finding her safe, he van-
ished into &e night.

JUNGLE NIGHTS AND JUNGLE DATS 153

The jungle-people never tried to reeross that
river. They built huts barely four miles from the
site of their old colony and settled down to their
normal routine of hunting, sleeping and eating.
Three weeks after the landslide had occurred, how-
ever, a fresh trial was sent to them. Poo Lorn had
disappeared.

Actually, he had left on one of those long secret
journeys to the north, but neither the jungle-people
nor Elise knew this. When more than a week had
passed without a sign of him, loud lamentations
rose from the huts. The jungle-people had lost
their god, and Elise her friend. Wherefore she wept
far into ttie night and refused to be comforted by
her foster-moth»..

PAET IV

CHAPTER XXin

CHECK LEE PLANS ESCAPE

Nearly four months had passed sinco tlu' dis-
appearance of little Elise. September had come,
and Eichard Cairns watched the calendar with
anxious eyes. In less than a fortnight’s time the
Morrisons were due to arrive in Bangkok, and a
week later they would have completed their long
journey to Ban Tern.

Cairns was thankful, for their arrival would save
his wife. As week after week had gone by without
news, her bright faith had dimmed. She performed
her household duties mechanically, as if her mind
were miles away in the depths of the gloomy jungle.
In vain had her husband implored her to stay either
in Lakon Lampang or Bangkok until the arrival of
the Morrisons, for she would at least meet a few
white women who could take care of her; but Elise
had been adamant in her resolve to remain in Ban
Tern.

During this period of anxious waiting Eichard
had been goodness itself. He nursed her when she
was ill, comforted her during her periods of acute
depression, .and it was through him alone that she
was able to face life bereft of hope.

The only occasions on which Cairns left Elise for
more than a few hours happened when he sought.,
out the farmer who was alleged to have sold th4
paddy-fields to Check Lee. But the man, probably
bribed by the Chinaman, had sworn that the
deed of sale was genuine; when asked to produce

l£)(j POO LOEN OF THE ELEPHANTS

the notes in proof, he stated that he had exchanged
them with a Burmese who had now left the country.
.Cairns, though he knew the farmer to be lying, _ re-
turned to the compound and wrote letters to various
officials and lawyers in the capital. Their replies,
however, merely confirmed his own suspicions : no
proof existed which would warrant the arrest of
.the Chinaman a second time.

While Elise was taking the afternoon rest upon
which he insisted, Eichard gazed across the com-
pound. Presently, as he rose to cross over to the
office, a strange native came running towards the
bungalow, and Cairns halted in his stride. The
new-comer appeared to be a forest hunter, for he
carried an ancient blunderbuss and his skin was
dark with sun. He ran up the steps and salaamed
before Cairns.

“Lord,” said he, “I have news to tell you.”

Cairns’s heart bounded, but with an effort he re-
mained outwardly calm.

“Speak, 0 hunter.”

The man told his story. He had been out in the
forest for buck, and had slept alone for many nights.
Three days ago, he passed a colony of jungle-people.
Lest they should take it into their heads to attack
him, he had hidden till nightfall. In the evening he
had seen a strange child. Its body was brown, but
different. Moreover, its hair was flaxen and its
eyes were blue. At the time he had thought no-
thing of the matter, but on passing through Ban
Tern to-day he had mentioned the incident to a
^ dealer in animal skins, and the dealer had said that
he must go at once to the great white lord who lived
/Upon the hill. '

“If thou canst lead me to the place where the
child was seen,” said Cairns when the man paused
for breath, “one thousand ticals shall be thine.’'

check: lee plans escape 157

The hunter gasped. But the white lord was in
earnest, and the compound sprang into activity.
The fastest elephants were brought in, and by three-
o’clock in the afternoon Eichard and Elise, mounted
on ponies, were heading through the jungle in a
northerly direction. By dint of forced marching
they reached the outskirts of the colony in forty-
eight hours, and then Cairns spread out his coolies
and cautiously approached the crazy huts.

The jungle-people, awed by the elephants and
the size of the men confronting them, made no-
attempt at resistance. They cowered on their hams
and watched every movement of the new-comers.
They saw two strange white human beings lift up the-
little girl who had come to them out of the void.
They saw the little girl look terrified, then cry with-
gladness and put her arms around the woman.
The mother, for mother she must be, wept bitterly
and clasped the infant to her bosom. This was
queer, thought the jungle-people, for should not a
mother be happy to regain her long-lost child?

But more extraordinary things were to happen to*
these simple folk. Instead of the white man being
angry with them for keeping the child, he showered
upon them all manner of eatables, the like of whichi
they had never seen before. This done, he and his.
companions disappeared, leaving the jungle-people
extremely bewildered. Kecovering from their sur-
prise, they jabbered and gesticulated till a great fear*
struck them dumb. What would they tell their god,
should he return and seek for the child?

The jungle-people had seemed quite harmless, so“ ^
Cairns set up his tents within a few miles of th^J’
colony, for be wished to camp early and give Elise
a rest. Once the tents were up, little Elise was
bathed, and Cairns felt a lump rise in his throat as

158 POO LORN OF THE ELEPHANTS

he watched mother and eliild together. Leaving
them alone for the moment, he stole softly out of
the tent and gazed at a universe that had suddenly
become most wonderfully beautiful.

His cook approached him. “Lord,” said that
worthy, wearing a broad grin all over liis dusky
features, “there is naught for dinner to-night save
bread and rice. Did not the master give all his
chickens to the wild people?”

Cairns smiled back at the cook. He was far too
happy to be hungry, but he realised that he must
get in supplies of some sort to provide .for the rest
of the journey to Ban Tern. He therefore seized
his gun and walked through the forest in search
of possible game.

The rains being on the wane, the evening was
clear and sunny; but Cairns, engrossed in his
thoughts, missed several opportunities of bagging
some fat green pigeon. At last the crowing of a
jungle-cock aroused him to realities and ho hastened
in the direction of its cry.

He passed the deserted huts of the wild folks*
old colony, and a few hundred yards farther on ar-
rived at a thick patch of evergreen, ins-ide which
he heard the bird calling. Guided by the sound,
he plunged through the dense mass of tliorns and
creeper; but the jungle-cock, keeping well out of
sight, scuttled away ahead of him. Soon the fail-
ing light warned him that it was time to abandon
the chase and return to camp. He was about to
ewing on his heel when a white glimmer on tlm
ground attracted his attention. He bent, then drew
in his breath sharply, for be was looking down at
" &e skeleton of a man,

s How long he had been dead he did not know,
for in ,ttie tropics, the ants work quickly. But from
the remains d the clothing that hung in shreds

CHECK LEE PLANS ESCAPE 159 ’

from the bones he realised that no jungle-man had
crawled here to die. , Then how, he asked himself,,
had a villager come to meet his end in such a lonely
spot as this?

His curiosity thoroughly aroused, Cairns scanned
the surrounding earth. A ’suspicion had flashed
across his mind, and he strove lo find some clue as.
to the identity of the dead man. He found it near
the remains — a small tin which rattled when he
picked it up. He took off the lid. Inside the tin
he saw Elise’s gold necklace, also fifteen one-hun-
dred tical notes in a state of perfect preservation.

Cairns slipped the tin into his shirt and retraced
his steps to camp, bagging on his way two brace of
green pigeon.

“Dick,’' said Elise, as he walked into the tent,
“she’s remembering her Lao again, and she keeps-
on talking about some elephant. She says it’s a
friend of hers. What can she mean?’'

“Goodness knows,’’ replied her husband absen-
tly, for his thoughts were not with elephants.

“Did you find anything?’’

“Only a few pigeon.” Cairns wished to keep
his other discovery a secret for tlie present. ,

By the time the party reached Ban Tern, Cairns
had weighed the pros and cons ef the case, and he
felt sure that at long last the arms of the law would
clutch Check Lee, the Chinaman. Banks in Nor-
thern Siam*being non-existent, it w^as the custom for
all Cairns’s company money to come up by rail
from Bangkok under the charge of a trusted clerk.
At the head of the railway Cairns received the
money and carried it out by elephant to Ban Tern^
where he placed it in the safe of his office. In ordex '
to minimise the chances of robbery, he kept a small
book in which he invariably jotted down the num-
bers of the notes, together with marginal state-

160 POO LOEN OP THE ELEPHANTS

■ments as to how he disposed of them. Thus, should
■ever a robbery occur, he could report the numbers
■to the police.

Cairns now hurried to his office and compared
the numbers of the notes he had found in the tin
with those in his book. As he had expected, the
notes were the ones he had handed Sang Noo.
Proof, real proof at last ! In his new case against
‘Check Lee there would be no frightened witnesses to
be tongue-tied by a clever native lawyer. Hard
facts would take their place. Certain notes had
been given to Check Lee. These had been found
■on the body of a man, who had possessed himself
•of Elise’s gold necklace. The child had been dis-
covered in the neighbourhood of the corpse. There-
fore the man, who was undoubtedly Ai Kham, had
been her kidnapper, and he had been in the pay of
■Check Lee for this very purpose. How else account
for such a huge sum upon him?

But then, reasoned Oainis, Check Lee might es-
■cape on some point of law, and his family would
again be exposed to terrible danger. Yet the China-
man was a ghoul in human form, and it was his
<luty to have him arrested. Perhaps he would take
action after Elise had been sent on holiday with her
parents, though by that time Check Lee might have
fled for the border.

Torn between conflicting emotions, Bichard con-
■sidered the problem all day. At dusk Sang Noo,
the Chinaman’s secretary, came shuffling across the
compound.

“My master has heard,” said Sang Noo in an
ingratiating drawl, “that the little flower has been
round. My master is pleased and sends the white
lord his congratulations,”

“Tell thy master that I am pleased to hear these
words,” rejAied Cairns dryly.

CHECK LEE PLANS ESCAPE 161

The secretary bowed. **And where, lord, if I
might ask, was the child found?”

'‘With the jungle-people, some sixty miles from
here,” answered the other, for he realised that the
news would have been spread by the coolies all over
the village.

"The lord did not find how she got there?”

"He did not.”

"And what will the lord do now?”

Cairns grinned inwardly. Sang Noo had been
sent by his master to discover how much Cairns
now knew of the affair. Well, the secretary would
get scant iiiformation out of him.

‘J^What will he do?” Cairns shrugged his
shoulders. "What more is to be done, since the
child is mine again?”

Sang Noo snuffled, apologised, coughed discreetly,
and crept back to his master.

"Great One,” said he, "the lord Cairns will say
naught beyond what we ourselves have heard in
the market-place. But I think he looks pleased.
He looks, indeed, as if he were aware of something
that bodes us no good.”

"Huh!” breathed Check Lee, and thought long
•and liard. The odds were that Ai Kharn had drop-
ped the child in some remote part of the forest,
where it had been found and cared for by the jungle-
people. Yet this w^as only guesswork, and the very
fact that the white man was behaving in so easy a
manner made him anxious. Soon Check Lee’s un-
easy conscience began to torment him. These white
lords — luck seemed to aid them in every under-
taking he took against them. It was written that
they should win and he should fail.

Checik Lee’s iron nerve was failing him at last.
Perhaps lie saw the stern hand of justice seizing
him and casting him into prison for the rest of his

162 POO LORN OF THE ELEPHANTS

life; but, whatever the cause, the Chinaman how
felt urged to do what was for him a strange thing.

When the village was fast asleep he entered a
tiny room at the back of his house. There, in a
niche in the wall, he lit tapers. Incense burned.
Night cloaked the land, and silence was in the house.
Check Lee was alone with his sacred ancestors.

For years he had neglected them. He had been
too much occupied with the business of making
money to give much thought to the holy and re-
verend dead. But now he would make amends.
Taking all his money with him, he would leave Ban
Tern for ever. He would make for the border and
lead a new and righteous existence in China.

On the morrow he called for Sang Noo.

“0 scribe, to-day there is much to be done, since
to-night we leave for the border.”

‘‘As the Great One wills. We go to the French
country?”

‘‘And through it to my own country.”

Sang Noo croaked. He had never journeyed so
far as this. French Indo-China he knew well, but
China itself— it was a long way off.

‘‘Save for Ah Fong, the cook, we go alone,”
went on Check Lee. ‘‘See, therefore, that three'
ponies are bought secretly, so that none may know
of our departure.”

‘‘Great One, could not the horses be hired?”-
asked the economical secretary.

‘‘They could not, for we leave Ban Tern for
ever.”

. Sang Noo’s face became a picture of dismay,
fjhe vision did not appeal. The rains were stilf
'falling and he was to go hundreds of miles through
virgin forest to an unknown country. Never again-
woujd he see the cheerful market place of Ban Tern,
never again haggle with an old Lao woman over

CHECK LEE PLANS ESCAPE 163

the price of a rice-cake dainty; never again behold
the placid "River Mae Lang.

Sang Noo glanced at his master’s face, and for
the first time saw traces of weakness in it. Check
Lee’s star was on the wane. At the thought he
plucked up courage.

“Great One,’’ he said sulkily, “this is too much
that you ask. I go not on this venture.”

But however much Check Lee might fear the
white man, of the cringing scribe he had no fear
whatever. He stretched out a skinny claw and
•seized the secretary’s arm in a vicelike grip.

“Knave, thou goest with me,” he hissed.

Sang Noo writhed with pain. “Great One, I
go,” he gasped.

“See to the horses,” snapped Check Lee.

Sang Noo bowed meekly and wormed out of the
house. When he had gone, the other clapped, and
Ah Fong slip-slopped in from the little kitchen.

“Ah Fong, thou art my friend?”

' Ah Fong grunted. He rarely did more.

Check Lee hissed, for he had seen certain in-
formation on Sang Noo’s cowardly features.

“To-day leave thy cooking, Ah Fong, and shadow
Sang Noo.”

Ah Fong grunted again and mih expressionless
face slithered out of the house.

CHAPTER XXIV

THE STEANGE BEHAVIODE OF SANG NOO'

Sang Noo bought the horses, and, after bribing the
seller to secrecy and telling him to have them sad-
dled and bridled in readiness for the night, returned
to the Chinaman's house. There he helped his
master in sundry preparations, and at noon an un-
appetising meal was served by Ah Pong. This over,
Check Lee sank into profound slumber in his chair.
In the kitchen the snores of Ah Fong told Sang
Noo that the cook was also resting before the journey.
Sang Noo smirked with satisfaction and glided out
of the house.

Sang Noo had steeled himself to a great resolve,
but first, in order to be braced for the coming ordeal ,
he went to the local grog-shop and tossed down a
dram of toddy. He had finished with Check Lee.
Was he, for the sake of serving an ungratefid bul-
lying master, to quit the homely scenes of the
village he had known for so long? He would do no
such thing. He would go forthwith to tlie great
white lord and tell the whole truth about tlie China-
man's evildoing. The white lord would give him a
large reward for the information and clap Cheek
Lee in irons. .Thus would his master meet with
the end he deserved, while he himself would be free
to enjoy his beloved Ban Tern.

Yet in his heart of hearts he still feared Check
' Lee, and accordingly he did not take the direct route
uj) the hill to the white man's premises, but cut
through the jungle in order to approach them from
the rear.

Once in the scrub that bordered the compound^

STRANGE BEHAVIOUR OF SANG NOO 165

however, Sang Noo’s courage failed him com-
pletely. How could he betray his master without
revealing to the white lord that he had been his
accomplice? And what would the lord Cairns do
when he heard that Sang Noo knew all about the
kidnapping? The lord would be exceedingly angry,
and the only reward he would get for the informa-
tion would be a good beating and several years in
jail.

Shivering, he cowered in the jungle for the better
part of an hour. Then, conscious that he had made
a thorough fool of himself, he walked slowly back
to the village. Being reluctant to return to Check
Lee’s house, he re-entered the grog-shop and imbibed
more palm toddy.

It failed to help him. What could he do? He
dared not seek the white man’s protection, while to
remain with Check Lee spelt exile. Had he better
flee to the capital? But he had no money of his
own, while, even if he could manage to obtain em-
ployment in Lakon, a prompt arrest might follow
should the lord Cairns suspect him.

Sang Noo’s gloomy meditations were broken by
the sudden entry of Ah Pong,

'‘Check Lee wants thee,” said the cook shortly.

Sang Noo experienced a strange sinking sensa-
tion at the pit of his stomach, but with an effort
he braced himself. After all, he had to decide one
way or another, and perhaps his best course was to
remain with his old master, who could scarcely sus-
pect him of a betrayal that had never taken place.
Sang Noo, heartened by the toddy, accompanied
Ah Pong down the road.

Check Lee was seated at a table on which were
stacks of one-tical notes. These he was tying into
bundles to be placed in panniers slung across one
of the horses’ backs. In the centre of the table an

166 POO LORN OF THE ELEPHANTS

oil-lamp sent a fitful light through the darkening
room.

“Sang Noo will be seated/’ said Check Lee.

The secretary licked his lips, which had become
unaccountably dry. Check Lee spoke again.

“Sang Noo has been absent a long while. If he
would explain . . /’

“I drink,” answered the secretary, “being griev-
ous because we leave Ban Tern for ever.”

Check Lee smiled, and pointed a finger at Ah
Pong, who stood at his elbow.

“Behold my new secretary,” said he.

“Great One, I do not understand,” faltered Sang
Noo, “Am I to be cook?”

“Sang Noo, my apologies. I regret I did not
make myself clear. I should have said: Behold
the man who now combines the duties of both cook
and secretary.”

“The Great One is pleased to joke,” said Sang
Noo feebly, and his face was the colour of grass.

“He is not. Now perhaps Sang Noo will tell
me why he hid in the jungle near the white man’s
compound this afternoon?”

“Master, I did wish to see whether the lord
Cairns was aware of our departure/’

“Sang Noo is indeed careful on my behalf. It
is a great pity he is leaving my service.”

“Master, I do not understand. .

“Now, Sang Noo has served me for long, and the
hour for his parting brings me pain . We will there-
fore drink tea together for the last time. And we
will driiak a special tea, prepared by Ah Pong to
meet the occasion. Ah Pong, bring the tea/’
cups were placed on the table.

“If the master would drink his first,” quavered
Sang* Noo.

STRANGE BEHAVIOUE OF SANG NOO 167

The Chinaman drained his at a gulp, and smiled
across the lamp in benevolent fashion.

'‘The tea is exceeding good,” said he. “Sang
Noo will never again taste such tea.”

Silence mantled the room. Ah Pong stood like
a graven image. Check Lee leered. Death stared
at Sang Noo from the smooth surface of the tea; it
threatened from a thin knife the Chinaman was
fingering; it lurked in the grim figure of Ah Fong.
For several moments icy fear bound Sang Noo hand
and foot. Then a cord seemed to snap in his brain.

In one lightning movement he sprang to his feet.
At the same time he heaved with all his might at
the table, which crashed over sideways, hurling the
oil-lamp and the bundles of ticals on to the floor.
A sea of flame washed over the teak boards. A
knife whizzed past his head and, quivering, buried
itself in the wall. Ah Fong’s arms seized him in a
terrible grip, but with a backward kick he sent the
man flying.

Then Sang Noo, once coward and traitor, ran
amok. No longer was he the whining individual
of the past : he was a desperate man with the
strength of ten. Yelling and screaming, with foam
bubbling on his lips, he rushed round the room,
upsetting everything that came in his path. The
fire! He must feed the fire! In the adjoining
store-room he seized a tin of kerosene, ripped out
the bung, and returned to the fire. Check Lee and
Ah Fong were making frantic efforts to rescue the
money. Sang Noo yelled and hurled the tin on to
the floor. A white wall of heat rose up with a
whirring roar. Blinded and scorched, the others
reeled out of the house, leaving Sang Noo alone.

The flames were everywhere now, licking up the
walls, stretching eager tongues at the roof overhead,
dancing in fantastic wreaths. Sang Noo danced

168 POO LORN OF THE ELEPHANTS

with them till a gust of smoke caught him in the
face and he made for the road outside.

The Chinaman was standing half dazed in the
middle of the road. Sang Noo shook his lean fists
in Check Lee’s face and showered frightful curses
upon him and his ancestors; but the Chinaman, as
if unable to believe his eyes or ears, stood like a
graven image and made no effort to stem the mad-
man’s flow of words.

Finally Sang Noo whirled on his heel and rushed
through the market-place. He had proclaimed
himself a man of deeds at last, and everyone should
know it. Holding both arms above his head and
screaming his triumph to the stars, he raced along
the track, and the villagers, awed by his ghastly
face^ sprang away from him in terror.

The village faded and the gloomy jungle enfolded
Sang Noo. The fit passed and a sudden weakness
melted his limbs. He sank down into the damp
scrub that bordered the path, and pressed face and
hands to the earth. Choking and sobbing, he lay
thus for an hour, while the demons of madness
gradually disappeared from his fevered brain.

CHAPTER XXV

THE AEEEST OF CHECK LEE

From his bungalow Cairns saw the red glare in the
village below. Fearing that a serious Are had
broken out, he ran across the compound, shouting
for his coolies to come with him to help the inha-
bitante. At the gates of the compound, however,
a dark-skinned Lao rushed up the hill towards him
and salaamed.

THE AiRREST OF CHECK! LEE 169

“Lord,” said he, “the Chinaman’s house is on
fire and strange things have happened in the village,
the like of v^hich I have never heard before.”

“And where is Check Lee?”

“Lord, he stands before his burning house like
a man who has lost the use of hand and brain.”

Eichard Cairns stiffened. If it were true that
by some strange chance Check Lee had been ren-
dered homeless, what would follow? The man
might still have a base of some sort over the border,
to which he would probably go. In the absence
of the gendarmes, he, Cairns, might, therefore have
to take the law into his own hands this very night.

At the thought he drew a deep breath, then ran
back to the bungalow for his revolver. As he slid
the holster on to his belt, Elise hurried out of the
bedroom, where she had been changing her dress
for dinner.

“What are you doing?” she asked him anxiously.

“There’s a fire in the village, and I’m going down
there to see if I can help.”

“But why the revolver?”

“There might be looting.”

“Can I come too?”

“Of course not. Now, quick: I must go.”

Five minutes later Eichard was striding through
the village. The Chinaman’s house was now a fiery
sea of flame and past all hope of saving, but luckily
the fire had not spread to the adjoining huts, for the
thatched coverings were still damp from the rains,
and there was no wind to fan the sparks. The
villagers were gathered in dozens to watch the scene.
They made no move to bring buckets of water from
the river, but stood in grim silence. Check Lee had
got what he deserved.

Cairns pushed his way through the crowd. Check

170 POO LORN OF THE ELEPHANTS

Lee, with Ah Pong by his side, was gazing help-
lessly at the conflagration. Cairns halted within a
few paces of the Chinaman, and their eyes met. A
stir went round the onlookers and they closed their
ranks. Drama had come to the little village of Ban
Tern.

Check Lee sucked in his breath, and that strange
numbness brought on by the shock of the fire and
the madness of Sang Noo left him. His brain
cleared, and he saw that he had lost home, money,
and all hope to make good with his ancestors. He
had nothing more to lose. Cheek Lee’s iron nerve
returned. He nudged Ah Pong, his faitliful friend.

"Go,” he whispered in Chinese. "This matter
is naught to do with thee. Seek my community at
Canton . Mention me and they will give thee work . ’ ’

Ah Pong melted in the crowd, and the people
made no effort to bar his progress. He was a mere
cook; Check Lee was their arch-enemy. Nor did
Cairns hinder Ah Pong’s departure, for the man was
unknown to him. Instead, he gazed steadily at
Check Lee. However great the risk, events had
forced his hand and Check Lee must be arrested on
the spot.

The Chinaman saw the stern blue eyes on him,
and he knew that prison awaited him, also dire
poverty for as long as he should live. But Check
Lee preferred death to prison, and he thanked the
spirits of his forebears that he had not aimed a
certain little dagger at the traitorous Sang Noo. It
still reposed in the folds of his garments, and with
it he would send himself and the hated white man to
'dtemity.

, Check Lee bowed to l^chard Cairns and walked
t0tfw?& him. Cairns stood firmly, with his revolver
at mAj), as if expecting to be attecked. The
attack caiae. Check Lee’s arm moved like a strik-

THE ARREST OF CHECK LEE 171

ing snake, but the revolver slashed down on his
wrist and the dagger tinkled to the ground.

Check Lee was led up to the compound, and the
little children spat as he passed. He was taken to
the company office and bound securely to a chair.
Having locked all the doors and seen that the win-
dows were fastened, Cairns left his Indian watch-
man to guard the office, and walked into the bungalow
to break the news to his wife.

“I’ve arrested Check Lee,” were his first words.

“Dick” — Blise went white to the lips — “I knew
you were keeping something back from me.”

“Yes, but I had to do it.” And he told her of
the discovery leading up to the Chinaman’s arrest.

“You were right,” she said soberly. “It would
have been a crime to have let him off. But what
are you going to do with him now you’ve got him?”

“I shall keep him locked up in the office till the
police arrive.*’

‘‘But supposing he escapes in the night. Don’t
trust him an inch. He’s capable of anything.”

“I know,” said her husband grimly. “I’ll take
no risks. I’ll take turn about with the Indian to
guard the place.”

“What about the compound coolies? Couldn’t
they help to watch?”

“No. I don’t trust them. They’re not accus-
tomed to that sort of job. Besides, they would fall
asleep the moment I wasn’t looking.”

“But couldn’t you take Check Lee into Lakon in-
stead of keeping' him here?”

“Too risky, I’m afraid. It wouldn’t be so easy to
guard him on the march. And remember : Sang
Noo is still at large. He might try to ambush us on
the way, and Check Lee may have other friends,
too. No, I’ll send a couple of coolies on horseback

172 POO LORN OF THE ELEPHANTS

into Lakon to-morrow with a report to the police.
The gendarmes ought to be here in four or five days’
time.”

“Do you think the police will take exception to
the way you’ve arrested Check Lee?”

“No: the chief is a friend of mine. Besides,
what else could I do?”

“Still, I don’t like Check Lee being near us for
so long,” said Elise anxiously.

“Why not go into Lakon to-morrow, taking the
kiddie with you? I’ll give you plenty of coolies for
the march, and the missionaries can put you up.”

“Dick! Can’t you see that I’d be much more
worried if you were alone?”

“Then what is to be done?”

“Exactly what you’ve already proposed ”

Elise broke off the sentence in quick alarm.

Over the veranda something in the shape of a man
was crawling. Its clothing was in tatters, its face
was streaked with sweat and dirt, its eyes were
glazed, and from its mouth issued hoarse gasps of
anguish.

“Sang Noo!” exclaimed Cairns.

“Lord, I die,” croaked the figure.

“Elise, the brandy. We’ve nothing to fear from
this creature.”

Sang Noo gulped down the spirit. He groaned,
shivered, then felt himself all over. Satisfied that
he was still in the land of the living, he forced his
tongue to speech.

“Lord,” said he, “I am afraid of Check Lee, the
Chinaman.”

“That is strange,” answered Cairns, “seeing that
he is under arrest in my office. “

The iffect of these words on the secretary was
etedrici!. He crawled to the white man*s feet and

THE ARREST OF CHECK LEE 173

feowed in an ecstasy of gratitude, but Cairns pusKed
the creature away; the very touch of the man sent
shivers down his spine.

“Lord,” croaked the secretary presently, “I
feared Check Lee because it was I who set his house
-on fire.”

“You did?”

“Lord, being now a man of no abode, and being
fearful of heart, I think I tell you all about the
’.Chinaman. Then perhaps you will have mercy up-
on your humble servant.”

“Thou shalt tell me all,” replied Cairns sternly,
“and leave nothing unspoken.”

Thus Sang Noo the Shan related the evil deeds
of the Chinaman from the time he had first joined
his service. He told every detail, sparing his
hearers nothing. By the time he had finished even
Eichard Cairns was white.

“I can’t stand any more,” said Elise. “Take
that creature out of the bungalow. His very pre-
sence is evil.”

Eichard led Sang Noo down into the compound,
where the secretary fell again on his knees.

“Lord, you will not forget me?” he whimpered.

“I shall not,” answered Cairns icily. “Thou
•shalt come with me to Lakon and bear witness
.against the Chinaman. Moreover, for thy crimes
thou shalt be cast into prison also.”

“But not the same prison as Check Lee?”

“That will doubtless be arranged.”

“The lord is good. Meanwhile, what will Sang
Noo do? He has nowhere to sleep, nor has he
money with which to buy food.”

“Follow me,” said Cairns, and he led Sang Noo
to the coolie lines.

“Give this person food,“- Cairns told the head

174 POO LOEN OP THE ELEPHANTS

coolie. “Then let him sleep in the cow-shed. And
touch him not, for he is of less caste than the low-
liest pariah-dog.”

Thus Sang Noo lay amongst the cows. Nor, as-
Cairns had guessed, did he try to flee, since he p<-e-
ferred prison to solitude.

While Sang Noo blubbered in the straw', Clieck
Lee gazed with unwinking eyes before him. He
hated his confinement, he hated Sang Noo, he liated
the little children who had spat upon him, but most
of all he hated the white lord who had humbled him.
These white lords : they stood for everything that
he held most in contempt. If he could have had
his way, they and all their brood would long ago
have been swept from the earth. Check Lee’s yel-
low face twisted with rage, and the veins of his
clawed hands stood out in knots. Check Lee, the
Chinaman, gave himself up to hatred.

CHAPTBE XXVI

POO LOEN’S LAST WAE-TEAIL

On the very day of Check Lee’s arrest, Poo Lorn
returned to the jungle-people after his long journey to
the north. Bumbling his gentle call, he went from
hpt to, hut, but of his little friend there was no sign.
The men and women, fearful of mien, stole up to
him bearing loads of the choicest jungle-fruit, which
plaoed reverently at Ws feet. Then they pros-
tjfSiTO fitemselves many times before him and toI3
days ago, a large company of human

POO lorn’s last war-trail 175

beings had arrived and surrounded the settlement,
•giving them no chance to flee. They told him how
a white man and a white woman had taken the
child though they had battled fiercely to protect it.
They hoped their god was not angry vrith his
servants.

All this Poo Lorn heard, but naturally could not
understand. Leaving the jungle-people unmolested,
he cruised around in the forest, searching for the tiny
creature that had become part of his very life.
Vast, pathetic, he wandered through the woods,
and loneliness went with him.

Presently he struck a trail along which both ele-
phants and men had passed. Poo Lorn, stopping
•only for brief intervals of sleeping and grazing, fol-
lowed that trail for over fifty miles. Thirty-sis
hours after leaving the jungle-people he came upon
the bank of the Mae Lang.

He reached the river at midnight. A wind was
blowing, and wracks of clouds scudded across the
moon. The wan light swept over the waters, whiten-
ing them, then plunging them in blackness. A low
thunder rumbled round the hills and the lightning
flickered.

The trail now swung along the river-path to the
right. It led straight towards the village of Ban
'Tern, and Poo Lorn, being now on familiar ^ound,
rumbled and bubbled vrith wrath. In the child Poo
Lorn saw her mother, with whom he had played in
the compound many years ago. To the compound,
therefore, the child had gone, and he knew who had
taken her thither. It was the hated white man.

Poo Lorn brooded. Firstly, a white man had
kept him in bondage for the larger portion of his
■earlier life. Secondly, a white man had captured
his herd. Thirdly, a white man had nearly recap-

176 POO LORN OF THE ELEPHANTS

tured him after he had gained his freedom. And
now the white man had stolen his one friend.

Though these facts went l)ut vaguely through
Poo Lorn’s brain, and in no particular sequence,
the full effect of them was as poorer ful as if he had
reasoned them out in detail; and as the thunder
rolled again, but louder this time, he raised his
trunk and bellowed back at it. He was mightier
than the thunder, for the full glory of his pride and,
his strength was upon him.

Wild and magnificent, he challenged the universe.
He, Poo Lorn the Terrible, was on the war-path
again. But now he would leave the village alone;
he would go direct to the compound and not only
lay waste the buildings, but kill the white man and
any other human being he came across. He swung
up the path.

A tree, caught by the freshening wind, crashed
directly in front of him. Glad to vent his rage on
something, he drove his tusks under it and hurled
it boldly into the fringing jungle. Two hundred
yards farther on, a scent he hated was wafted througii
the forest. Normally Poo Lorn would have passed
by, but now the blood-lust was upon him and he
had become a veritable fiend. Mindful of a certain
incident that had happened to him when he was
eleven years old, he lurched towards the scent.

A deer, drinking in the river that evening, had
been slain by a great tiger, which now ate lusci-
ously, cracking the bones with its mighty teeth and
licking off the flesh with rasping tongue.

As the vast black shape loomed above it the tiger
snarled. Poo Lorn lunged, and the tiger, furious
jat being disturbed, flashed through the night at its
i^gressor* Quickly Poo Lorn curled up his trunk
^ety, and received the flying death on the points
of tusks. One shake of the head, and

DEATH IN THE COMPOUND 177

the tiger was hurled through the air, to fall in a
sodden ball a few yards from its victim. Poo Lorn
trampled it, then returned to the path.

Ho now no longer trumpeted. Terrific, implac-
able, he moved silently towards his goal.

CHAPTER SXVII

DEATH IN THE COMPOUND

Eichard Cairns sat outside the office, listening to
the thunder rolling on the horizon. Moon shadows
chased one another over the lawns. The wind had
risen and with every moment steadily increased.

It was the second night of his vigil. In the
office, freed partially from his bonds, the Chinaman
slept on a camp-bed, In three days’ time, Cairns
reflected thankfully, the police would arrive and
Check Lee would be taken in chains to the capital.
A week later the Morrisons should be in Ban Tern,
and Blise could either go on holiday with her
parents to Bangkok or remain with them in the
bungalow, while he himself went into Lakon to
arrange about the trial. Events were shaping
nicely.

Cairns yawned. He was tired, for the time was
two o’clock in the morning, which was the hour
when the Indian watchman, who lived in a little
hut at the rear of the compound near the border
of the jungle, should come out with his gun to re-
lieve him. He, Cairns, had no gun : he trusted
to his revolver.

6a

1 ach

178 POO LORN OP THE ELEPHANTS

Cairns glanced at his wrist-watch. Five niiniites
past two, but no sign of the Indian appearing. He
waited another ten minutes, then, judging that the
man must have overslept himself, hurried over to
the tiny shanty built on tall stilts as a protection
from the damp. He climbed up the ladder and
creaked over the rickety bamboo flooring. He
switched on his electric torch and l)chcld the Indian
fast asleep in one corner. The man’s breathing
was heavy and stertorous, and Cairns bent and
shook him roughly. But the Indian remained
wrapped in slumber, and Cairns swore under his
breath, for he did not like leaving the office un-
guarded for even the shortest time. He bent again,
made one more effort at rousing the sleeper, then
brushed a troubled hand across his forehead. Wliy
should the Indian be sleeping like the dead? This
was no normal sleep, he felt sure.

Cairns rayed the torch round the hut. Save for
the prone figure and a few cooking utensils, the hut
was empty. He stood iiTesolute for a wliile, then
blinked and rubbed his eyes. The walls of llie lit-
tle shanty appeared to be reeling and swaying, so
that his head whirled and a sickness took him in
the throat.

What was that? Tlie ladder behind him had
creaked. He half turned, but his movements were
lethargic. A blow struck him on the liead and be
pitched forward limply on to the floor.

Ah Fong, late cook of Check Lee, lowered the
butt of the Indian’s gun. Not for nothing had he
hidden, ever since his master’s arrest, in the jungle
bordering the compound. There he had watched
every movement in the company’s premises, noting
the white man’s routine, and he had laid his plans
accordingly. He, Ah Fong, was a man of deeds,
not ‘words, and Ms knowledge of the power of yang

DEATH IN THE COMPOUND 179

bark, together with the hut’s being built on stilts,
had helped him greatly in his scheme for saving his
master.

Removing his head band, which he had wrapped
round his mouth and nostrils, he tore the cloth into
strips, which he tied quickly round both men’s
wrists and ankles. This done, he seized Cairns’s
belt, on which dangled a bunch of keys; then, carry-
ing the white man’s torch and revolver and the
Indian’s gun, he hastened down the ladder.
Though he had breathed in the air of the hut for
scarcely a minute, the fumes were already affecting
liis brain, but a few draughts of the cool wind out-
side speedily revived him, and he rushed over the
lawns to the office.

“Hist!” he whispered -through the door. “It is
Ah Fong, master.”

Tlie Chinaman, who was awake, snapped back
dii'ections, and the cook fumbled with the bunch of
keys. After trying several in the lock, he found
one that fitted. Check Lee was free.

“Thou hast done well, Ah Fong,” breathed the
Chinaman. “Where is the white man?”

“Master, he sleeps in the watchman’s hut, as
also does the watchman,” answered Ah Fong
calmly. “I think I not kill them, for a gun make
noise and I lose my knife in the fire. But we
have time before us. The yang bark works well.”

Check Lee nodded. The yang tree grows all over
the Siam Hills, but only the Chinaman and a few
of his confederates knew that its bark, when smoul-
dering, gives forth a thin, well-nigh' invisible smoke
that brings deep sleep when inhaled. The bark
had often served Check Lee before, and he there-
fore wasted no time in further questioning. He
snatched the torch from his companion’s hand and
began to examine the keys. As he fingered the

180 POO LORN OF THE ELEPHANTS

bunch Ah Fong uttered the longest sentence of his
life :

‘It all easy,” said he. “After dark I creep
under the watchman’s hut. I leave bark to smoul-
der so that’ the smoke go through the cracks in the
bamboo floor above. Soon watchman sleep hard
and I steal his gun. But I not like to go to office
lest the white man see me come, i think I wait.
I think white man come presently to the watch-
man’s hut to wake him, and I get him then. And
I, Ah Fong, think right.”

Check Lee grunted, for no^v he had the key he
wanted. Bidding the other hold the torch, he in-
serted the key in the office safe. Tfie door, how-
ever, refused to swung open. The safe was a com-
bination one, and without the cipher the key w'as
useless. The white man probably (airriod the sc'cret
of the combination in his head, and he now lay
unconscious in a tiny hut.

The Chinaman gave way to mad unreasoning
rage. He and Ah Fong must flee, penniless and
outlawed, into the depths of the jungle, and tiie
lord Cairns would triumpli as niucli ns if they had
both been cast into prison in the capital.

Check Lee bisscri, ami swung round to his com-
panion. Thou Ha5*est that the lord Cairns is alive
for sure?” he asked.

‘"Master, I think he only stunned. I think he
live/*

“That is good,” breathed the other, for lie had
thought of a revenge that would turn the white
man’s triumph to dust and ashes in bis mouth whan
he recovered consciousness,

^ “Ah' long, thou wilt do anything that I bid
thee?”

-AnjftMng, master.”

It sti^nge,: thfe love on the part of the ser-

DEATH IN T|HE ^ ^ ^81

vant for his Yillainous iiafe age

.Gneck Lee had saved Ai^ong from a nigniy un-
pleasant death, since in S^)ng u* murderer.
He had hired false witiieS^^ Ah -Fong had ‘•been
released, and from then on &ejffliidej!erfh;0^(^een
Check Lee’s slave, cook-“aTrdr*seeon^^ —

Check Lee, after hearing Ah Fong’s reply, swept
the torch along the walls of the office, as if seeking
something. Presently his glance fell on a large
shelf at one end of the building. On it were several
jungle-knives of the kind issued to coolies for forest'
work. Check Lee selected two of the sharpest. One
he handed to’ Ah Fong, the other he kept for him-
self. Leaving the firearms behind, he motioned to-
his companion and crept out of the office. Knives
were the best weapons; they struck quickly and in
silence.

“Master, we go to the watchman’s hut?” whis-
pered Ah Fong.

“We do not,” answered the Chinaman tersely.

One hundred yards away was the bungalow in-
which Cairns’s wife and child were sleeping; and
a bungalow, as Check Lee well knew, is built open-
fashion for the sake of coolness.

Ah Fong grinned, a thin mirthless grin, and the-
pair slunk over the lawns, across which shadows
were flying from the cloud-wracked moon.

They came to within twenty paces of the foot of
the steps, and halted to listen. Silence.

“The time is ripe,” whispered Check Lee.
“Thou fool, why dost thou hesitate?”

But Ah Fong, as if a sixth sense had warned him,
had turned and^was staring behind him. The moon-
swung clear of clouds, and on his companion’s face-
Check Lee saw a look of horror, as though the man
were gazing upon death. Then Check Lee, tooy

182 POO LORN OF THE ELEPHANTS

looked behind him. His body stiffened and the
knife dropped from his fingers. He opened his
mouth to scream, but his heart was strangling his
throat. Ghosts and devils were abroad in the night
.and evil had come upon the land.

For, over the lawns and heading straight for the
bungalow, a vast black shape was advancing. And
it came eerily without a sound. Its body, lit by
the moon, lacked colour, so that it appeared even
larger than it was. Only the great curved tusks
were real, and these gleamed like yellow wands in
the sickly light.

Check Lee tried to flee, but he could only stand
.and stare. The wind sprang up again and hissed
'Over the compound. The grass, lengthened by the
recent rains, moaned and bowed. The coco-nut
trees threshed their palms and curved their stately
stems.

On that wind Poo Lorn caught the scent of the
two humans near the bungalow. He knew the
scent, recognised it, and perhaps a memory of a
pit and days of frightful torture flashed swiftly
upon him, for his gait increased and he covered the
ground with incredible speed. He muffled over the
grass, a vast looming shadow. Under the terrific
^onrush Check Lee was hurled to earth with a force
that broke every bone in his body. Yet he still
lived, for by his very speed Poo Lorn had charged
over and beyond him. But Poo Lorn turned like
.a flash and knelt over the fallen man. . . .

Such was the end of Check Lee, the Chinaman*

Poo Lorn raised his great head to see the second
iiuman disappear behind a clump of bushes. He
mxmg into his peerless stride, crashed through the
%^eS| mA, though the figure ran fast, soon
it. His trunk, as strong as a live
It hit Ah Pong in the

DEATH IN THE COMPOUND 18S'

side. Ah Fong fell. The man screamed once, and
then a giant forefoot came down.

When Poo Lorn stood up, he threshed his trunk
in uncertain fashion. Part of his rage had expended
itself, and for the moment the reason for his visit-
ing the compound was forgotten. For a while he*
swayed, pondering in that strange elephantine way
of his; then he remembered. There, blacker than?
the night, loomed the building in which dwelt his
hated enemies.

His great legs stiffened, then flung him forward.
His little pig-eyes gleamed red as he thought of the
vengeance that would be his.

In the large airy bedroom Blise lay asleep. By
the side of her bed the child breathed evenly in it&
cot. Wind moaned through the shutters and sent
cool draughts across the apartment.

Suddenly Blise started out of her sleep and sat
upright. She had been dreaming, and through the
dream had come so loud a scream that it had
awakened her.

She listened intently. But no sound came
again, only the wind moaning and sighing. A
feeling of uneasiness enveloped her. Pulling aside
her mosquito-net, she sprang out of bed, and, draw-
ing back the shutters, looked through the open
window. But the moon had clouded and she could
make out nothing.

With shaking fingers she lit a candle. Her first
glance was towards the cot, where little Blise wa&
sleeping peacefully. Then she looked at her wrist-
watch — close on three o’clock in the morning. Her
husband should have been back in the bungalow
nearly an hour.

Her sense of uneasiness increased. What had
kept Dick away, and what was that scream? Ought

184 POO LORN OP THE ELEPHANTS

she to run over to the office to see if her liusband
were safe?

She wrapped a light cloak round her shoulders
and stood in doubt for a while. Then her eyes
•dilated with terror. Something had passed across
the front of the bungalow and gone round to the
side. Though she had been staring at the cot at
the time, and had not been looking out of the win-
dow, she had felt that presence pass.

Somewhere a clock was ticking with a madden-
ing persistency. She counted the seconds, and
after ten had passed a crash jarred the bungalow
and the whole building trembled. Silence once
more. Then another sickening jolt and Blise heard
the deep wrathful bubbling of an elephant.

She sprang to the cot. She did not reason about
it : she knew that Poo Lorn the Terrible had come
to lay waste the compound a second time, and that
death stared her in the face. With the strengtli
of fear, she tore the child from the cot and rushed
down the steps into the compound.

She screamed her husband’s name and began
running with all her might across the grass towards
the dim shape of the office, where she judged
Eichard to be. But the compound was a full two
hundred yards in length, with the office almost at
the other end of it, and the stables still more dist-
ant; and Elise knew that, should Poo Lorn leave
the bungalow and give chase, there was little hope.

The moon passed the rim of a cloud and light
flooded the compound, Elise glanced over her
shoulder. Poo Lorn was pouring over the ground
in her wake. Panic seized her. She resolved to
tell her child to run on to the office while she sacri-
ficed herself. She swung little Elise on to the
ground, but the child had caught its mother’s fear
?atia.diung to her^

DEATH IN THE COMPOUND 185

Elise looked backwards again. It was nearly
on them now, that great looming death. Neither
•could escape. As realisation flashed upon her, she
played her last card. Pulling the child behind her,
she drew herself to her full height and faced the
oncoming giant.

Poo Lorn ! ” she screamed . ‘ ‘ Haouw ! ’ ’

This was her old command when she wished him
to halt. Her voice rang high and clear. Its sound
was drowned by one great flaring trumpet. Elise
ceased breathing, rocked on her feet. Poo Lorn
had halted!

He stood within fifteen paces of her, still fierce
^nd untamable. What had caused him to check
an his stride was not the command, but sheer aston-
ishment. For years the men, whether white, black
‘Or brown, had fled in terror from his presence, yet
here was one small woman challenging his might.

Poo Lorn trumpeted again in his surprise. Then,
puzzled and hostile, he advanced a pace. Elise made
.a superhuman effort to stand her ground and speak
to Poo Lorn in the soothing tones she had used to
him when she was a girl. As she did so, little Elise
moved round from behind her.

Poo Lorn rolled on his feet. There, by the side
•of the woman, was the small creature he loved.
His rage stilled and partial sanity returned. How
could he hurt this woman without hurting his tiny
friend also? Moreover, what was that voice echo-
ing through his memory?

He towered over the pair. There was the little
,girl he loved, but with her was someone else of
whom he had been fond, and he had thought them
to be one and the same.

He advanced a further pace. The woman did not
•stir, for she knew that her only chance lay in re-
^maining quite motionless. But little Elise, as she

186 POO LORN OF THE ELEPHANTS

saw the huge form and recognised her friend, threw
caution to the winds and began prattling to Poo
Lorn in a queer mixture of Lao and some unknown
language. Her mother listened as one in a waking
dream.

Finally, at the child’s shrill command, Poo Lorn
knelt humbly upon the ground.

Poo Lorn the Terrible, terrible no longer, had
ended his last war-trail.-

CHAPTER XXVIII

A EEUNION

The night faded. Dawn paled, and the sun sent
shafts of flame over the easWn hills. The heavens
turned from a hazy purple to a brilliant blue, for
the wind had swept the clouds from the sky, Poo
Lorn drank in the coolness of the fair morning and
•surveyed his domain. Spmehow the old familiar
sights gladdened his eyes and brought memories of
pounded tamarind and the other delicacies which
he had received in this very same compound. But
in those days he had been man’s servant; now he
was his conqueror.

The sun flamed brighter and Poo Lorn moved
into the shade of a tree. Unmolested, he watched
the tiny humans busy themselves on their affairs.
From the watchman’s hut there came Elise with
her husband. He looked pale and ill, and leant on
the woman’s shoulder. They vanished into the
bungalow, which some coolies were shoring up with
new posts. Presently more coolies passed Poo Lorn.
'They kept at a respectful distance, bowed in awe
at liis gigantic form, and then stooped over two
objects lying on the grass. Half an hour later,
•carrying long boxes on their shoulders, these coolies
vanished into the green of the jungle for the burial.

Poo Lorn, too, made for the forest, but in a
•different direction. He grazed till evening, bathed
in the River Mae Lang, then passed through the
village of Ban Tern on his way back to the com-
pound. The inhabitants shrank in terror, but a tiny
brown piccaninny wallowed in the dust right in
Poo Lorn’s path. The mother screamed, but the

188 POO LORN OF THE ELEPHANTS

mite gurgled with laughter and rolled on its back
and kicked its legs in the air. Poo Lorn had no-
quarrel with babes : lie carefully avoided it and
strode on up the hill to the compound, none hin-
dering him.

He rolled to the bungalow, and humans peered
over the veranda at him. They seemed to confer
with one another, and Poo Lorn became impatient,
for he rumbled and rapped his trunk against the
ground.

The parents walked slowly down the steps and
led little Elise towards him. Poo Lorn showed no-
hostility, for the father, if not his friend, was at
least no longer an enemy. Like the jungle-folk, he-
dwelt with and cared for the child.

The man offered tamarind, which Poo Lorn ac-
cepted with aloofness. Then the child lauglied,
and her tiny form Avas swept into the air. She
squealed with delight, and Elise watched her with
anxious adoring eyes. Little Elise was replaced on
the ground and ran to her mother.

'‘Dick/’ whispered Elise, “I believe I under-
stand everything — now.”

But Eichard Cairns did not reply immediately.
He remembered those dreams of his when, years ago,
he had set out to capture Poo Lorn the' Terrible.
Then he had seen visions of tiny hands feeding the
pride of Asia with the dainties dear to his heart.
Now, perhaps, those dreams would come true, if
he could satisfy Government that Poo Lorn had
ceased his reign of violence.

“Eemember, Elise,” he said after a pause, “Poo
Lorn has still got a price on his head— at least
officially.”

/‘But Government have left him alone since that
fest raid of bis on Lakon. They wouldn’t do any-
thing to him now, would they?^

A REUNION 189

“I don’t know, but I do know that while I live
I want that elephant to live.”

“Poo Lorn,” said Elise, “they shan’t take you,
-old chap. And I’d like to cry, if only you’d under-
stand.”

But Poo Lorn swung away, for the light was fail-
ing and the jungle called. He entered the quiet
forest and there grazed and slept at peace. When
morning broke he moved slowly in a circular course,
going over the old familiar ground where he had
toiled in the years of his slavery.

He came to a felling camp, near which tame ele-
phants were rolling the felled logs down the hills.
While some of the elephants strove with tusks, trunk
and forehead to lever the huge pieces of timber down
the slope, others in a tiny creek below were drag-
ging logs over wooden sleepers towards the River
Mae Lang. They had chains upon them, and ma-
houts with goads rode on their necks and urged
them forward.

Poo Lorn, who had watched them through a
screen of leaves, plunged into full view, as if chal-
lenging those mahouts and chainmen to bend him
to their wills. The brown men, though many of
them had never seen him before, knew him to be
the great Poo Lorn, and their faces turned yellow in
the sickly jungle light.

The mahouts bowed on the necks of their charges,
the chainmen dropped their shackles, and soon a
chant rose that proclaimed the wonders of their Lord
King. They likened him to a giant, beneath whose
mighty tread the earth shakes and at whose voice
the heavens tremble and split asunder. The high
nasal whine rose and fell through the green jungle
walls. Even the tame elephants sensed the eeriness,
for they chirruped uneasily and felt the air with|
nervous wriggling trunks.

190 POO LORN OF THE ELEPHANTS

Poo Lorn, satisfied that none of those humans
threatened him, moved on. He passed other camps,
and in all that thousand-square-mile forest he was
treated as a god. Yet his chief interest lay, not in
the scattered felling camps where he had v/orked,
but in various luxuriant patches of grass where he
had fed in the days of old. In these he grazed'
leisurely, and not until over a week had passed did
he return to seek out his little friend.

He rolled through the white gates on a calm sun-
ny evening. There seemed to be a great deal of
aotmty in the compound : coolies were hurrying in
different directions, and ponies were being led to-
wards the stables. At his appearance all movement
ceased, and a group of white people at the foot of
the bungalow steps broke off their conversation and
stared at him.

Poo Lorn swung towards the group, and the child
and her mother advanced to meet him. He rum-
bled threateningly, for an old hatred had sprang up
in his heart at the sight of one of those white folk
— a man, half forgotten and yet familiar, who had
returned from the past. . . . Little Elise, borrow-
ing her grandfather’s stick, ran to him. As he
seemed to ignore her, she promptly lost her temper.

“Kneel,” she shrilled at him in Lao. “See thus
and thus and thus do I beat thee for being the great
pig thou art.”

Poo Lorn knelt, for the beating tickled him deli-
ciously and restored his good temper.

Old John Morrison passed a hand across his grey
head.

“Can I give him tamarind?” he asked, much as
'a small boy might have done.

"Mm, your coming out here has made you quite
«ii^,a^n,” said Mary. "I wouldn’t think of
go near him.”

ENVOI

'‘Come on, Father,” called Elise. "We’re stand-
ing by him, so yon will be quite safe.”

John Morrison grasped a handful of sticky tama-
rind, kneaded it into a ball and stretched out one
hand. Poo Lorn’s wrinkled trunk took the ball dis-
dainfully, as if he suffered this human to approach
and do him homage.

John Morrison drew back, but he no longer saw
the gigantic figure of Poo Lorn the Terrible. In-
stead, he saw a tiny cringing butcha that had
■squeaked with fright and run away from him to the
protection of its gentle mother. He saw, too, a
hopeless, pathetic little creature, broken in body and
spirit after the ordeal of the posts, looking at him
as though all interest in life had gone. As he
thought of the strangeness and wonder of it all, a
lump rose in his throat and his eyes clouded.

Mary took her husband’s arm. "Dear,” said
she, "come on into the bungalow. The excitement
has been too much for you,”

"It has, thank God,’’ was old John Morrison’s
queer answer.

CHAPTER XXIX

ENVOI

There is an elephant in Northern Siam who is not
like other elephants. Though wild, he is often seen
in the haunts of man. Sometimes, when the rivers
are in flood and the teak logs go booming and
crashing round rock-strewn bends, he will plunge
into the water and join his tame fellows. No

192 POO LORN OF THE ELEPHANTS

mahout is on his head, yet for the sheer joy of
being able to use the terrific strength that only he
can muster he will clear stack after stack of logs,
sending the huge baulks of timber riding like
matches down the yellow muddy currents. He will
not drag a log, however, because to drag means that
chains must be put upon him, and this be will never
suffer.

There are weeks when he will return to his favour-
ite grazing grounds, but more often than not he
will be found in the Ban Tern compound, where
a strange sight will be seen. Little Elisc has now a
small brother, and of an evening, when the sun is
mellowing over the world and the screaming flocks
of minus and parakeets are flying to their nests, the
children will bully Poo Lorn. At their stern orders
he kneels, with his hind legs 1)ent and his forelegs
out before him. The children play hide-and-seek
on either side of his giant body: they tug at his
great waving ears; they pound him with tlieir tiny
fists; and he, who could slay them with one careless
movement, endures it all gladly, for they arc his
friends. The parents, as they watch the game, take
snapshots for the old people in far-away England
again.

Though no man can approach unless the children
are with him, Poo Lorn is no longer actively hostile
to humans. But there is one exception : the cring-
ing Shan secretary. Sang Noo, his period of im-
prisonment at an end, earns a scanty livelihood by
selling chillies and tobacco in the village, and w^hen-
ever Poo Lorn sees him he chases him. The secre-
tary, pale of countenance and scattering his goods
to the winds, flees in terror, and everybody laughs.
Poo Lom appears to enjoy the joke, for he
.attppts to catch the fugitive and slay him,
as he^^ wuld* Thus Poo Lom the Terrible is

ENVOI 193:

terrible no more. The price on his head has been
lifted through Representations by Cairns to the’
Siamese Government, and he remains a god — a god
that can be tamed by children.

At times, however, even the children cannot bend
him to their wills; this is when that strange instinct
for the north assails him. Perhaps the urge comes-
when they are playing round him. He rises gently
and, softly pushihg them to one side, makes for the-
exit of the compound. The children stare after
him, and there is mingled sorrow and understanding
in their eyes, for they know that Poo Lorn is leaving
them for a land beyond their ken.

He strides down the hill to the village. The amber-
waters of the Mae Lang run sweetly between the
cool green fringes of the jungle. Wafts of smoke
rise in the quiet air. Meek buffaloes quit their work,
and ploughmen sing high whining chants as they
walk slowly homewards. The world, mantled in-
soft beauty, breathes in peace.

Poo Lorn reaches the dusty market-place and the
chatter stills. Lean pariah dogs slink between the*
posts of little huts. Hens flutter across the road,
calling their chicks. Pretty Lao girls, lithe and
dainty, draw hibiscus blooms from their jet-black
hair and throw them down in Poo Lorn’s path,
while the menfolk bow low, for is not the mighty
Poo Lorn using their humble thoroughfare? Only
the naked brown piccaninnies show no such rever-
ence. They sprawl and wallow in the dust at PoO’
Lorn’s feet, and with his trunk he tenderly pushes
them out of harm’s way.

He enters the quiet forest. Monkeys whoop and
swing from branch to branch, telling the jungle of
his approach; sleepy brown bears dart in terror to
their dens; deer stop feeding, lift antlered heads, and;'
with soft frightened eyes scan their green surround-

l94 poo lorn of the elephants
.ngs; tiger and panther slink like yellow ribbons
through the tangled riot of green. »

All the beasts of the forest give way to Poo Lorn
as for fifteen days and nights he travels nortlnvards,
stopping only to gi'aze and enjoy the three hours’
sleep that is necessary to his kind.

On the sixteenth day he reaches a vast area of
thick thorn jungle that stretches over the country
like a cloak. Under and through the thorn he urges
his huge bulk with ease, and the maze is dim as
though a perpetual twilight reigned. He comes to
a great wall of rock, some sixty feet high and a
mile broad, which lips the edge of the thorn jungle.
No man living has been within a hundred miles
•of it, for it is in the wildest land between the Salween
and Mae Kong watersheds.

Poo Lorn halts. Though a silent animal as a
rule, he gives forth one great screaming trumpet.
Caught up by the barrier of rock, it rolls round and
round in stupendous echoes.

They seem to speak, those echoes; they seem to
say : “I am Poo Lom the Terrible. I have fought
with man and conquered him, thereby earning my
freedom and my right to the burial-place of the
■wilds.”

Gradually the echoes die away. Sometimes he
will stay for several days, grazing at leisure. At
others, as if satisfied that the locality is as safe and
undefiled as when he first visited it, he swings round,
and with noiseless tread starts on his long journey
hack to the humans who are his servants.

lor fifty, sixty, even eighty more years he may
■stay vrifti them; but when the final call tells him
^^days are drawing to an end, he will return and
wjldem^ for the last time.

' iwrt area lie #ie reoudns of his ancestors

Jn tiie dim bygone ages.

ENVOI lys-

Therefore, guided by the unerring instinct of his
race, Poo Lorn the Terrible had fought with the
whole of his gigantic strength for the right to die in<
the place appointed, where neither the hand of man
nor the tearing beaks of jungle vultures can disturb
his last long rest.

THE END